Coastal Electric Power Substations in Continental US and Puerto Rico

This feature class represents electric power substations located within 20 miles of the coastline in the continental US and Puerto Rico, including facilities that switch, transform, or regulate voltage. The data includes taps where transmission lines interconnect and extends inland along major rivers and bays. Data for Alaska, Hawaii, and other US territories is absent, and Puerto Rico's information predates the 2017 hurricane season.

Use Cases

• Map substation locations relative to the coastline for vulnerability assessments of coastal infrastructure.
• Analyze the distribution of transmission line taps along coastal regions to study grid interconnection density.
• Identify substations near major rivers and bays for planning related to inland waterway-related energy infrastructure.

Strengths

• Focuses on a specific and critical infrastructure subset: substations within 20 miles of the coastline.
• Includes geographically extended coverage by considering major rivers and bays hydrologically connected to coastal waters.
• Provided by authoritative organizations: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Commerce.

Limitations

• Dataset is explicitly incomplete, lacking data for Alaska, Hawaii, and all US sovereign territories except Puerto Rico.
• Data for Puerto Rico is outdated, predating the 2017 hurricane season, raising questions about its current validity.
• The specific number of features (rows) and attributes (columns) is unknown, limiting assessment of dataset scale and detail.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Time Range

Snapshot predating 2017 for Puerto Rico; temporal coverage for continental US not specified.

Freshness

Last updated October 2024, with stated intent to update as new data becomes available.

Geography

Continental United States and Puerto Rico, specifically areas within 20 miles of the coastline including major rivers and bays.