Abstract: The paper introduces airborne Lidar technology and traditional electrical power line design method briefly, clearly represents the superiority of using airborne Lidar technology in electrical power line design project，which mainly displays the following aspects: the optimization design of an electric route and setting pole points, the area estimation for cutting down forest, the amount of house removal, the altitude measurement of trees and houses, and real-time crossa2section survey, etc. Then, this paper describes the application of airborne lidar technology in the electric route design in Anhui province, the relevant data processing, the true 3D mapping system for selecting electric route, which is developed by VB language on basis of ArcGIS. The measured results show that the above system can satisfy the precision requirement. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of airborne lidar technology are summarized.