Tag:power=station
 power = station
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Using this tag is discouraged, use power=substation for substations, power=plant for power plants (power stations) or power=generator for power generating equipment instead.  
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| Group: power |
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Status: deprecated
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The reason is documented in Deprecated features. You are still free to continue to use or interpret this tag as you see fit since OpenStreetMap does not have “banned features”.
Under no circumstances should you (semi-)automatically change “deprecated” tags to something else in the database on a large scale without conforming to the automated edits code of conduct. Any such change will be reverted.
Former use
This tag was used as shorthand tagging for electrical distribution substations, which are facilities that perform voltage conversion and switching as part of an electrical transmission or distribution network. Since January 2008, power distribution and conversion facilities should be tagged as power=substation instead, because this is less ambiguous.
Problematically for the database, the term "power station" is more usually associated with power generation facilities in the English language. For example, the Wikipedia article Power station begins "A power station (also referred to as a generating station, power plant, or powerhouse) is an industrial facility for the generation of electric energy". See the talk page here for a fuller discussion, but in practice this linguistic ambiguity is already known to have caused data errors. Since June 2013, power generation facilities should be mapped using the power=plant or power=generator tags.
Important note on retagging
If you start retagging features now tagged as power=station please follow these guidelines :
- Don't perform any mass retagging. Each instance must be inspected individually (e.g. from survey or aerial imagery) before being retagged.
- Check whether it is a substation or a power plant (power=plant). A significant number of features currently tagged as 'station' are actually power plants (places / sites) or generators (devices inside a power plant).
- It's strongly encouraged to add voltage=* and substation=* tags to power=substation objects. The voltage tag should include at least the highest voltage used in the substation.
If you don't know the voltage(s) used or the substation type then you may use fixme=voltage to inform knowledgeable contributors about the lack of information.