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Asset classes
- Transmission Line80,968
- Power Plant32,429
- Substation / Converter7,614
- Oil & Gas Field7,055
- Coal / Uranium Mine5,382
- Pipeline4,951
- Cement Plant3,513
- Data Centre3,283
- Iron & Steel Plant1,293
- LNG Terminal1,198
- Grid Storage965
- Iron Ore Mine949
- Chemical Plant868
- Interconnector704
- Export Terminal519
- Refinery279
- Storage / Tank Farm38
- Oil / Commodity Contract19
- Hydrogen Project18
- Carbon Capture (CCS)16
Chokepoints
Malawi · electricity network
Malawi power grid
OverWatts maps 191 km of Malawi's electricity transmission network across 3 line segments and 2 substations, the 139th most-mapped grid of 153 countries. Its backbone is extra-high voltage (380–764 kV), carrying 191 km — 100% of the mapped length, with the highest tagged voltage at 400 kV. That works out to 1.7 km per 1,000 km² of land — sparse OpenStreetMap coverage, ahead of 8% of mapped countries. No cross-border capacity is recorded today; 50 MW is planned.
OpenStreetMap coverage
This grades how completely OpenStreetMap has drawn Malawi's network — not how much network exists. Large, sparsely-populated countries score low for geographic reasons alone, and every kilometre here is mapped length, so the totals are a floor rather than an operator-reported figure. 0% of segments carry a real line name and 0% an operator tag.
Mapped line length by voltage
- 380–764 kV191 km 100%
3 segments · a segment is credited to the country containing its midpoint, so a border-crossing line counts once, on one side.
Cross-border links from Malawi
- Mozambique50 MW · planned
0 MW existing · 50 MW planned · capacities from the Global Transmission Database v0.1 (CC BY 4.0), existing as of 2023
On the interactive map
Load against the network
Where there is room to connect a new load depends on published hosting capacity, which most operators release only as their own map. OverWatts does not yet ingest those feeds, so these are the density measures the open data supports — generation and mapped demand against mapped network — not a headroom figure.
How Malawi compares · mapped grid by country
- 1. People's Republic of China624,300 km
- 137. Luxembourg210 km
- 138. Djibouti194 km
- 139. Malawi191 km
- 140. Yemen183 km
- 141. Gabon172 km
Frequently asked
- How big is Malawi's transmission network?
- OverWatts maps 191 km of transmission line in Malawi, across 3 segments, plus 2 substations. This is mapped length from OpenStreetMap, not an operator-reported total — where OSM is incomplete the figure is a floor, never a ceiling.
- What voltage is Malawi's grid?
- Most of the mapped network is extra-high voltage (380–764 kV): 191 km of 191 km. The highest voltage tagged anywhere in the country is 400 kV.
- How complete is the grid map for Malawi?
- Sparse — 1.7 km of mapped line per 1,000 km² of land, ahead of 8% of the 153 countries with any mapped grid. Coverage grades how completely OpenStreetMap has drawn the network, not how much network exists; large, sparsely-populated countries score low for geographic reasons alone.
- What interconnectors connect Malawi to its neighbours?
- None recorded as operating. 50 MW is planned across 1 pathway.
Elsewhere in Malawi
Network geometry: OpenStreetMap (ODbL) © OpenStreetMap contributors, ingested and measured by OverWatts · derived 2026-07-26. Counts every mapped line of 220 kV and above; the map layer draws the ≥380 kV backbone only, so it shows less than is measured here.