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OSM-AT Data Processing Pipeline

OSM as a Source for the Austrian Electricity Network

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is the primary data source for the electricity network in PyPSA-Eur. For Austria, OSM provides a particularly reliable foundation: a recent validation study by Gaumnitz et al. (2024) compared OSM-derived network data against official TSO records and found that OSM contains a highly accurate representation of the Austrian high-voltage transmission grid, with strong agreement at both the 220 kV and 380 kV levels (Gaumnitz et al., 2024).

The OSM-AT Archive

The pre-processed AT-specific OSM dataset is published on Zenodo:

Zenodo record 18799980 — https://zenodo.org/records/18799980

This archive is the default data source when data.osm.source: archive is set in the config. It is fetched automatically by the retrieve_osm_archive rule:

config/config.at.yaml
data:
  osm:
    source: archive
    version: 0.2-at

The archive was produced by applying the same processing steps described in this page to an OSM snapshot. Switching to source: build and version: unknown re-runs the full pipeline from scratch using the PyPSA-Eur build_osm_network outputs.

The Build Pipeline

When data.osm.source: build and data.osm.version: unknown is configured, PyPSA-AT adds a second rule build_osm_network_at immediately after the PyPSA-Eur build_osm_network rule:

build_osm_network  →  build_osm_network_at  →  base_network
  (PyPSA-Eur)           (PyPSA-AT)
  resources/osm/build/  resources/osm/build-at/

build_osm_network_at reads the five network CSV files produced by build_osm_network (buses, lines, links, converters, transformers), applies AT-specific filtering, and writes the results to resources/osm/build-at/. The downstream base_network rule is automatically redirected to consume from build-at/ by the input_base_network override in rules/modify.smk.

Running the snakemake rule 
pixi run snakemake build_osm_network_at -call

The --rerun-triggers mtime flag prevents re-downloading existing files when data/osm/build/unknown already partly exists:

pixi run snakemake build_osm_network_at -call --rerun-triggers mtime

Cross-Border Line Drop Logic

Why cross-border 110 kV lines are removed

Not all 110 kV lines in the OSM dataset are part of the inter-regional transmission grid. Some cross-border lines at this voltage level are:

  • DSO distribution tie-lines — low-voltage interconnections between neighboring distribution grids, operated below the TSO level.
  • Generation tie-lines — radial connections from a power plant on one side of the border to a substation on the other side, carrying no transit capacity.

These lines are not TSO interconnectors and should not be modeled as cross-border transmission capacity. Including them would artificially inflate the cross-border exchange capacity between Austria and its neighbors at voltages below 220 kV.

What is dropped

A line is removed when both of the following conditions hold:

  1. Cross-border: exactly one of its endpoints (bus0 / bus1) belongs to an Austrian bus (i.e. country == "AT").
  2. Low voltage: voltage < 220 kV.

In the current OSM-AT dataset osm-at v0.2 this removes 18 lines, all at 110 kV, that connect Austrian substations to substations in Germany, Switzerland, or Italy.

index line_id bus0 bus1 voltage circuits length tags
0 277 way/96001615-110 way/273300969-110 way/95975628-110 110 1 14471.5 way/96001615-110
1 3134 way/48442852-110 way/93982415-110 way/92320586-110 110 2 25408 way/48442852-110
2 24336 way/36969924-110 way/26703085-110 way/1075075893-110 110 2 11656 way/36969924-110
3 24337 way/61112955-110 way/92293213-110 AT70-110 110 2 13432.4 way/61112955-110
4 24338 way/92299558-110 DE1342-110 way/94406313-110 110 2 5638.39 way/92299558-110
5 24339 way/93129480-110 way/81540198-110 way/133669362-110 110 1 8266.06 way/93129480-110
6 24340 way/94177573-110 AT70-110 DE1342-110 110 4 3717.27 way/94177573-110
7 24341 way/105180509-110 AT64-110 way/33463751-110 110 2 2559.07 way/105180509-110
8 24342 way/114873667-110 way/116021711-110 way/86351876-110 110 2 2471.58 way/114873667-110
9 24344 way/123810051-110 way/95972388-110 way/95978048-110 110 1 7178.79 way/123810051-110
10 24346 way/353715115-110 way/24886281-110 way/118248006-110 110 2 11323.3 way/353715115-110
11 24410 way/169471085-110 way/116021711-110 way/114873634-110 110 1 10540 way/169471085-110
12 24412 way/368155120-110 way/50729129-110 way/888593883-110 110 1 4880.52 way/368155120-110
13 36618 merged_way/32493449-110+1 way/32493406-110 DE1299-110 110 2 26385.1 way/30023326-110;way/32493449-110
14 36664 merged_way/93129482-110+1 way/81540198-110 way/133669362-110 110 2 13629.1 way/105431204-2-110;way/93129482-110
15 36668 merged_way/169635581-110+1 way/40641599-110 DE1347-110 110 1 12885.5 way/169635581-110;way/116009750-110
16 36677 merged_way/147059434-110+1 way/42352281-110 way/1155210065-110 110 1 10679.7 way/147059434-110;way/996088216-110
17 36678 merged_way/30712473-110+1 way/194983924-110 way/1154201243-110 110 2 39639.9 way/30712473-110;way/147563006-110

What is kept

Domestic Austrian lines below 220 kV are not affected. A line with both endpoints inside Austria — regardless of its voltage — is never removed. This preserves the full 110 kV intra-Austrian network that enables NUTS3-level clustering and captures the domestic transmission topology between regional load centres.

Cross-border lines at 220 kV and above are also always kept. Those are genuine TSO interconnectors (e.g. the 380 kV ties to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy) that represent real cross-border transmission capacity.

The table below summarizes which lines survive the filter:

Line type Voltage Action
Domestic AT–AT line any keep
Cross-border TSO interconnector ≥ 220 kV keep
Cross-border DSO / generation tie < 220 kV drop

Implementation

The filtering is implemented in scripts/pypsa-at/build_osm_network_at.py::drop_cross_border_lines_lv:

Note that the script raises a ValueError at startup if 110.0 is absent from config.electricity.voltages:

Building the AT dataset without the 110 kV level would produce the default PyPSA-Eur data set.

config/config.at.yaml
data:
  osm:
    source: archive
    version: 0.7 (or latest)

Notebook

A marimo notebook contains additional infos, graphs and calculation steps that may be useful for debugging or deeper exploration. .marimo/validate-electricity-network-at.py.