I'm looking for shapefiles or other spatial definitions for electric utility service areas in the United States. Does this exist in a single place anywhere?
6 Answers
The US Energy Information Administration has a few geographic resources (like the US Energy Mapping System and the State Energy Data System but there's no sign of a collection of electric utility service areas.
On a state-by-state basis, there are a variety of resources available. This might provide a roadmap for motivated parties to request shapefiles and assemble the dataset. I'm going to make this answer a 'community wiki' in case other people want to flesh it out with more states or hunt further for GIS files on states where PDFs were easier to find..
- Arkansas (map, shp, gdb)
- California (map, shp)
- Connecticut (gdb, shp) Utility Infrastructure and Pipelines
- Illinois (unofficial PDF map)
- Indiana (map, shp)
- Iowa (pdf map)
- Kentucky
- Massachusetts (map, shp; town-level detail only)
- Minnesota (.shp, .gdb, .kmz, OGC GeoPackage)
- New Hampshire (pdf map)
- North Carolina (pdf map of co-ops)
- Vermont (.shp)
- Wisconsin (pdf map)
US (National/Federal)
- Bureau of Transportation Statistics Geospatial Information
Canada
Atlas of Canada Energy GIS
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Unfortunately, state-by-state isn't really helpful for me. I have to imagine someone has compiled boundary lines by utility for the entire US. I'll leave this question open until we have a more solid answer. In the meantime, I'll keep looking into this. Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 0:02
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Thanks @dmahr for your thoughts here. I'll investigate the commercial datasets you referenced. Commented Apr 10, 2015 at 14:35
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1This answer is out of date. A public dataset does exit (see my answer below).– essCommented Mar 19, 2020 at 12:50
A website by the Dept of Energy called NEPAnode has this, disclaimer it is a project I manage. You can downloaded these vector datasets in a number of formats including shapefile:
http://nepanode.anl.gov/layers/geonode%3Aferc_regions
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1Unless I'm mistaken, these are boundaries of regulatory commissions and not service areas. Please correct me if I'm wrong.– juturnaCommented Apr 27, 2015 at 15:19
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2These are the best public datasets on electric transmission boundaries... You will not find utility level service areas for the entire US. I second the thread above Commented Apr 27, 2015 at 16:10
I was able to obtain TVA's service territory from TVA, but otherwise I have not found anything in addition to the resources listed above.
(Note I would have added this as a comment to the existing thread but I need a higher reputation I guess.)
Are you looking for something like the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation - Level Data (HIFLD) Retail Electric Service Territories shapefiles?
This feature class/shapefile represents electric power retail service territories. These are areas serviced by electric power utilities responsible for the retail sale of electric power to local customers, whether residential, industrial, or commercial.
Found here.
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seems to be the real thing -- would be great for other folks to give it a look and upvote this answer if they agree Commented Mar 23, 2020 at 21:06
This is the source I use for electric utility service territories:
It is through the US dept of Homeland Security. I can't promise that it is perfect, but this type of geographic info is hard to come by
We've been working on this for a couple of years and have the most accurate maps available: https://findenergy.com/electricity/