How big is a US power plant?
The typical US power plant is small: half of the 14,286 plants in the 2025 EIA-860 data have less than 5.3 MW of nameplate capacity. Capacity, though, is concentrated in a few hundred large sites. The 310 plants of 1,000 MW or more hold 37% of the country’s 1,376.6 GW, while the 8,218 plants under 10 MW together hold 2.0%.
That split explains why lists of power plants feel so different depending on who makes them. Count sites and the map fills with rooftop-sized solar arrays, landfill-gas engines and small river dams. Count megawatts and a short list of nuclear stations, coal plants and large gas complexes dominates.
Plants by size band
The table sorts every plant into a size band by its total nameplate capacity, the sum of the manufacturer ratings of its operable generators. The second pair of columns shows how much of the national total each band holds.
| Size band | Plants | Share of plants | Capacity | Share of capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–10 MW | 8,218 | 57.5% | 27.2 GW | 2.0% |
| 10–50 MW | 2,234 | 15.6% | 50.7 GW | 3.7% |
| 50–100 MW | 1,114 | 7.8% | 79.4 GW | 5.8% |
| 100–500 MW | 1,981 | 13.9% | 406.7 GW | 29.5% |
| 500–1,000 MW | 429 | 3.0% | 297.2 GW | 21.6% |
| 1,000–2,000 MW | 240 | 1.7% | 328.2 GW | 23.8% |
| 2,000 MW and up | 70 | 0.5% | 187.3 GW | 13.6% |
The middle of the table matters too. Plants between 100 and 500 MW are only 14% of sites but carry 30% of capacity, the largest share of any band. Many wind farms, gas combustion-turbine plants and utility-scale solar projects land here.
Size depends on the fuel
A plant’s size is mostly set by its technology. Nuclear stations are built around reactors of roughly a gigawatt each, so the median nuclear plant is 1,849 MW. Coal plants follow, with a median of 720 MW. At the other end, the median solar plant is 3.4 MW, and 5,508 of the 7,112 solar plants are below 10 MW. Every one of them still clears EIA’s 1 MW reporting threshold, which is why they count here at all.
| Main fuel | Plants | Median size | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nuclear | 56 | 1,849 MW | 4,658 MW |
| Coal | 195 | 720 MW | 4,008 MW |
| Pumped-storage hydro | 33 | 424 MW | 2,862 MW |
| Wind | 1,356 | 100 MW | 1,027 MW |
| Natural gas | 1,961 | 78.5 MW | 4,263 MW |
| Geothermal | 66 | 36 MW | 1,236 MW |
| Other sources | 71 | 30 MW | 176 MW |
| Battery storage | 605 | 10 MW | 1,000 MW |
| Hydroelectric | 1,390 | 7.5 MW | 6,809 MW |
| Oil and petroleum | 857 | 7 MW | 1,804 MW |
| Biomass and waste | 584 | 6.4 MW | 172 MW |
| Solar | 7,112 | 3.4 MW | 1,070 MW |
Hydroelectric plants show the widest spread. The median hydro plant is 7.5 MW, a small dam or canal drop, yet the largest, Grand Coulee in Washington, is also the largest plant of any kind in the country at 6,809 MW. Battery storage has a median of 10 MW, but its largest sites now reach 1,000 MW.
What “big” means on this site
Each plant page ranks a plant against all plants, against the plants of its state and against plants with the same main fuel. A 300 MW plant can be a minor site in Texas and one of the largest in Vermont, so the state rank is often the more useful one. State pages list the 25 largest plants in each state, and the plant finder filters all 14,286 plants by size band, fuel and state, so you can reproduce any row of the tables above.
Limits of the measure
Nameplate capacity is what the generators are rated for, not what they produce. A 100 MW solar plant and a 100 MW gas plant have the same nameplate rating but deliver very different amounts of energy over a year, because the sun sets and the gas plant can run around the clock. EIA-860 does not report generation; that comes from a different EIA survey (Form EIA-923), which this site does not use. Sizes here therefore compare equipment, not output. For how nameplate differs from the capacity a plant can deliver on a hot day, see nameplate and summer capacity explained.
How many units make a plant
A plant is a site, and a site can hold one generator or dozens. The median nuclear plant has two operable units and the median coal plant two, while the typical solar, wind or battery plant is reported as a single generator, even when it covers thousands of panels or a hundred turbines. The plant with the most operable units in the data is Edison Sault in Michigan, with 73.
| Main fuel | Median operable units |
|---|---|
| Nuclear | 2 |
| Coal | 2 |
| Natural gas | 3 |
| Hydroelectric | 2 |
| Wind | 1 |
| Solar | 1 |
| Battery storage | 1 |
Big plants by state
How much of a state’s capacity sits in gigawatt-scale plants varies widely. In West Virginia, plants of 1,000 MW or more hold 75% of the state’s capacity, the highest share in the country. Among states with at least one such plant, Iowa has the lowest share, 7%. There is no plant of that size at all in Alaska, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Rhode Island, South Dakota or Vermont. Those states run on fleets of small and mid-sized plants, which is why a 200 MW site can rank near the top of their state lists.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-860 (Annual Electric Generator Report), 2025 final data (Sep 2026). Downloaded 2026-10-28. Figures are computed by GridPlants from the plant, generator and ownership files; see how to read the data.