“OpenGridWorks reminds us that electricity is not simply generated. It is connected, transported, balanced and trusted. The power grid is the hidden architecture of modern civilization.” – MJ Martin
A New Way to See Electricity
OpenGridWorks is a remarkable website because it takes something most people never see as a complete system and places it on a single interactive map. The page at OpenGridWorks Power Plants allows a user to explore the location of power plants around the world and then see how generation connects to the broader electrical system. Instead of thinking about electricity as something that simply appears at a wall outlet, the viewer begins to understand the physical infrastructure behind modern life. Power plants, transmission lines, substations, data centres, pipelines, submarine cables and planned projects become visible as part of one enormous global machine.
What It Is
At its core, OpenGridWorks is a geospatial visualization tool. It is not a utility control room, a real-time outage system or an operational dispatch platform. It is a public-facing map that gathers many separate datasets and presents them in a way that is understandable, searchable and visually powerful. A user can zoom from a global view down to a local region and examine how generating assets are distributed. Coal, gas, hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and other forms of generation can be understood not just as fuel types, but as geography. The site helps tell the story of where electricity is produced, where it must travel and where the constraints may exist.
Who Made It
OpenGridWorks was created by Brian Bartholomew, who describes his work as making publicly accessible electric grid charts and data. The project reflects a combination of energy market knowledge, public data integration and modern mapping technology. It uses public and open sources such as OpenStreetMap, Global Energy Monitor, the United States Energy Information Administration and other infrastructure datasets. The achievement is not only that the data exists, but that it has been assembled into a single visual experience. That is the real innovation. Many public datasets are technically available, but they are often fragmented, difficult to use and hidden behind formats that only specialists understand.
Why It Is Useful
OpenGridWorks is useful because energy is becoming a location-driven problem. The future of electricity is not only about building more generation. It is about connecting generation to load, balancing intermittent renewable energy, serving fast-growing data centres and strengthening transmission corridors. A solar farm in the wrong location is not useful if the grid cannot move the power. A data centre may look attractive on paper, but it becomes a much harder project if there is no nearby capacity, substation access or transmission support. By showing generation and grid infrastructure together, OpenGridWorks helps planners, investors, engineers, policymakers and citizens see the physical reality behind energy decisions.
The Bigger Story
For decades, the power grid was mostly invisible to the public. Utilities planned it, engineers operated it and customers paid for it. That model is changing. Electrification, electric vehicles, heat pumps, artificial intelligence, industrial growth and renewable energy are putting new pressure on the grid. Transmission is now one of the biggest bottlenecks in the energy transition. OpenGridWorks gives people a way to see that bottleneck. It turns abstract debates about clean energy, reliability and infrastructure into something visual and concrete.
A Map of Modern Civilization
The worldwide power grid is one of humanity’s largest engineered systems. It powers hospitals, homes, factories, water systems, communications networks and the digital economy. OpenGridWorks matters because it reminds us that electricity is not magic. It is infrastructure. It is steel towers, substations, generators, rights-of-way, cables, transformers and planning discipline. By making the grid visible, the website helps make the energy conversation more practical, more informed and more honest.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven major certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Power BI, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.
Martin in a volunteer, a photographer, a learner, a technologist, a philosophizer, and a romantic optimist.