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A group of wind turbines were constructed at Gravely Cambridgeshire UK around 5km from my home and have been mapped by Great Britain’s Ordnance Survey, It took a couple of years for them to map them which was quick, for them. Note our OSM openstreetmap was purposely similarity named to promote it, that was how I discovered osm within a year or so of it’s creation by Steve Coast. I looked at OSM and noticed the turbines had not been mapped, how could I plot them? ( without copying from the Ordinance Survey Map). The turbines are by private ground and most are at least a kilometre from any public access. I gave the problem some thought and looked at the area and noticed that from some directions the turbines were in two lines of 4. I now had a plan I would position myself and my gps on these lines in turn and plot four points, that would give me two lines that the turbines could be plotted along. I used field papers and printed the map so i could sketch the rough layout and take notes. I used my Garmin Oregon 450 and recorded 12 waypoints at positions along the surrounding roads where either four or two turbines aligned. Using Potlatch2 the plan was to join pairs of the waypoints with an untagged way then do the same with a cross pair, the intersection of the two ways should be where a turbine could be plotted. The untagged ways were then deleted. I repeated the process for the eight turbines, job done. I checked ( and only checked) against OS.All my results were within 40 meters most within 10 meters of OS. THEY could be wrong!! The downside is you can only see them in an editor as none of the Map Page maps render them…yet.

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Discussion

Comment from GinaroZ on 8 June 2016 at 22:37

The reason they aren’t visible on the map is because you haven’t tagged them correctly! ;)

Please read the wiki for information on how to tag them: osm.wiki/Tag:generator:source%3Dwind and more generally: osm.wiki/Tag:power%3Dgenerator

I’m not sure if there’s a preset in Potlach2 or not - but I know there definitely is one in the iD editor.

Comment from andy mackey on 15 July 2023 at 07:46

Thanks GinaroZ very belatedly. I took your advice and they did show up. Newer Airiel images proved my surveying technique was pretty good. More recently I have noticed that taking pics of the ground with hedgerows, field edges and trees and other features can help fix a point when compared to older aerial images of the area.

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