What you are looking at
This is real aerial imagery of Temecula — Google's photography, not a drawing and not a generated picture. Onto it we have placed 200-foot lattice towers along SDG&E's own published corridor, spaced at the roughly 1,150-foot spans a 500 kV line uses, across the 6.1 miles it would run. The towers are drawn in bright yellow so you can find them in the frame; real towers are grey.
Step through the stops below. Click the picture, drag the slider, or use the arrow keys.
Illustrative. The towers are drawn in high-visibility yellow so they can be seen; real towers are grey. Height, count and spacing are based on public specifications, not SDG&E's final design.
Stop 1 of 12 — Where the line enters Temecula
SDG&E's corridor crosses into the City of Temecula here and runs six miles east. Imagery: Google Earth Pro.
12 places along the line, west to east
- Where the line enters Temecula · mile 0.0
SDG&E's corridor crosses into the City of Temecula here and runs six miles east.
- The I-15 crossing · mile 1.0
The corridor crosses Interstate 15 here — the landmark almost everyone in town navigates by.
- Pala Road Park · mile 1.8
The centerline runs about 11 metres from the edge of Pala Road Park — the closest approach to any park in the city.
- Pala Community Park · mile 2.3
Pala Community Park sits about 300 metres north of the centerline, inside the half-kilometre band.
- John Magee Park · mile 2.8
About 150 metres from the centerline.
- Early Works Child Development Center · mile 3.2
The centerline runs about 58 metres from this child development center.
- Growing Tree Montessori Preschool · mile 3.3
The centerline runs about 25 metres from this preschool — the closest approach to any school in the city.
- Redhawk Community Park · mile 3.3
About 240 metres from the centerline.
- Vail Ranch Middle School · mile 4.7
Vail Ranch Middle School sits about 217 metres from the centerline, well inside SDG&E's published study corridor.
- Temecula Creek Trail Park · mile 5.0
About 130 metres from the centerline, along the creek trail.
- Madigan Park · mile 5.8
About 425 metres from the centerline, near the eastern edge of the city.
- Where the line leaves Temecula · mile 6.1
The corridor leaves the city near Anza Road and continues east toward the wine country.
How this was made
The route is SDG&E's own drawn geometry, lifted as vector paths from its August 2026 project fact sheet and placed against Temecula's city-limit boundary and the Imperial Valley Substation, which it lands on to within about a tenth of a mile. The towers were positioned by a script from that centerline, at a fixed span — not placed by hand, and reproducible if the route moves. The pictures are screen captures from Google Earth Pro, at true elevation with no vertical exaggeration.
No AI image generation was used. The photograph itself has not been repainted, enhanced or invented: every building, road and tree is Google's imagery as captured, and every tower sits where SDG&E's published corridor puts it. The one thing we chose is the colour. Drawn in a realistic galvanized grey, the towers measured as indistinguishable from the rooftops and hillsides behind them at every viewpoint on this page — so they are drawn in high-visibility yellow instead, and the corridor band in violet. That makes them legible, and it also makes them unmistakably an overlay rather than something the camera saw.
What this is, and what it isn't
- Illustrative, not final. Tower height, count and spacing come from public specifications, not SDG&E's design. SDG&E has not filed with the CPUC, so no surveyed tower position exists. What is SDG&E's here is the corridor. Where each tower stands along it is our own even spacing — so if one appears to land on a particular street or parcel, that is an artefact of the spacing, not a claim about that address. Engineers place structures at chosen points, avoiding roads and watercourses.
- A visual aid, not a sightline study. It cannot tell you whether your own view would be blocked, and it should not be read that way.
- A corridor, not a property line. SDG&E published a 1,000-foot-wide study corridor — a search area. Where the violet band appears, that is what it is.
- Google's imagery, on Google's schedule. Buildings and trees are as of their capture date, not today.
Why the line isn't drawn down the creek bed. Across Temecula SDG&E's corridor runs a median of about 230 feet (71 m) from Temecula Creek. But our georeferencing of SDG&E's own published map is itself accurate to about 360 feet (110 m) at the I-15 crossing. Those two numbers are the same size, so we cannot tell whether SDG&E drew slightly off the creek or our reading of their map is slightly off. Rather than nudge the line onto the creek and claim precision we don't have, we show SDG&E's corridor exactly as they published it. The creek falls inside their band about 97% of the way across the city.
See the route from above, with the homes, streets and protected areas around it.
The corridor map