The largest power plants in the US

By Megan Sullivan · Published October 28, 2026 · Data as of the end of 2025 (EIA-860 final release)

The largest power plant in the United States is Grand Coulee, the hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River in Washington, with 6,809 MW of nameplate capacity in the 2025 EIA-860 data. Next is Vogtle in Georgia at 4,658 MW. The ten largest plants together hold 3.0% of the country’s capacity.

The ranking below uses nameplate capacity of operable generators, summed per plant as EIA defines the plant. Two dams that straddle a state line, such as Hoover Dam, are reported as two plants, one per state, and are ranked that way here.

The top 25

Rank	Plant	State	Main fuel	Capacity	First unit
1	Grand Coulee	Washington	Hydroelectric	6,809 MW	1941
2	Vogtle	Georgia	Nuclear	4,658 MW	1987
3	West County Energy Center	Florida	Natural gas	4,263 MW	2009
4	Palo Verde	Arizona	Nuclear	4,210 MW	1986
5	W A Parish	Texas	Coal	4,008 MW	1958
6	Browns Ferry	Alabama	Nuclear	3,854 MW	1974
7	Bowen	Georgia	Coal	3,499 MW	1971
8	Crystal River	Florida	Natural gas	3,449 MW	1982
9	Barry	Alabama	Natural gas	3,344 MW	1954
10	Gibson	Indiana	Coal	3,340 MW	1975
11	Monroe (MI)	Michigan	Coal	3,293 MW	1969
12	Turkey Point	Florida	Nuclear	2,978 MW	1972
13	Manatee	Florida	Natural gas	2,951 MW	1976
14	John E Amos	West Virginia	Coal	2,933 MW	1971
15	Peach Bottom	Pennsylvania	Nuclear	2,876 MW	1974
16	Bath County	Virginia	Pumped-storage hydro	2,862 MW	1985
17	Jack McDonough	Georgia	Natural gas	2,848 MW	1971
18	James H Miller Jr	Alabama	Coal	2,822 MW	1978
19	South Texas Project	Texas	Nuclear	2,709 MW	1988
20	Fort Myers	Florida	Natural gas	2,681 MW	1958
21	Scherer	Georgia	Coal	2,673 MW	1982
22	Oconee	South Carolina	Nuclear	2,667 MW	1973
23	Cumberland (TN)	Tennessee	Coal	2,600 MW	1973
24	Gavin Power, LLC	Ohio	Coal	2,600 MW	1974
25	Rockport	Indiana	Coal	2,600 MW	1984

Natural gas plants make up 6 of the 25, coal plants 10 and nuclear stations 7. Florida has more of them than any other state, with 5. The oldest in the group by first working unit is Grand Coulee (1941); the most recent addition is at Vogtle, where a unit came online in 2024.

Four of the 6 gas plants on the list also have coal or oil units on file, still operating or retired, next to their gas units. The unit-by-unit chart on each plant page shows that history, including units that have since retired.

The largest plant for each fuel

Main fuel	Plant	State	Capacity
Natural gas	West County Energy Center	Florida	4,263 MW
Coal	W A Parish	Texas	4,008 MW
Wind	Great Prairie Wind	Texas	1,027 MW
Solar	Gemini Solar Hybrid	Nevada	1,070 MW
Nuclear	Vogtle	Georgia	4,658 MW
Hydroelectric	Grand Coulee	Washington	6,809 MW
Battery storage	Bellefield Solar and Energy Storage Farm	California	1,000 MW
Oil and petroleum	Oswego Harbor Power	New York	1,804 MW
Pumped-storage hydro	Bath County	Virginia	2,862 MW
Biomass and waste	Mansfield Mill	Louisiana	172 MW
Geothermal	Geysers Unit 5-20	California	1,236 MW
Other sources	ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor	Indiana	176 MW

Some leaders are much smaller than the national giants: the largest geothermal and biomass plants are a fraction of the size of the largest nuclear station. Wind and solar leaders are large because EIA counts a whole project, with hundreds of turbines or thousands of panels, as one plant.

Why rankings differ between sources

Other lists of the largest US power plants often disagree with this one, for three reasons. Some rank by net generation in a year, which favors nuclear plants that run almost continuously. Some use net summer capacity instead of nameplate; the order then shifts slightly, since gas turbines lose more output in hot weather than other units. And some combine neighboring plants that EIA reports separately. On this site the measure is always nameplate capacity from EIA-860, and each plant is the plant as EIA records it.

To build your own list, for example the largest plants in one state or the largest battery sites, use the plant finder and sort by capacity.

The biggest single generators

Plant size and unit size are different questions. A plant can reach the top 25 with many mid-sized units, while the largest single machines are concentrated in a few places. Of the ten largest operable generators in the data, all ten are nuclear units. The largest is unit 2 at Peach Bottom, rated at 1,499 MW.

Plant	State	Technology	Unit size	Online
Peach Bottom	Pennsylvania	Nuclear	1,499 MW	1974
Grand Gulf	Mississippi	Nuclear	1,440 MW	1985
Palo Verde	Arizona	Nuclear	1,403 MW	1986
Palo Verde	Arizona	Nuclear	1,403 MW	1986
Palo Verde	Arizona	Nuclear	1,403 MW	1988
Peach Bottom	Pennsylvania	Nuclear	1,377 MW	1974
South Texas Project	Texas	Nuclear	1,354 MW	1988
South Texas Project	Texas	Nuclear	1,354 MW	1989
Millstone	Connecticut	Nuclear	1,350 MW	1986
Perry	Ohio	Nuclear	1,312 MW	1987

The largest plant in the ten biggest states

In states with large fleets, even the biggest plant is a small slice of the total. Across the ten states with the most capacity, the largest plant holds between 2.0% and 10.9% of its state’s nameplate capacity.

State	State capacity	Largest plant	Its capacity	Share of state
Texas	196.0 GW	W A Parish	4,008 MW	2.0%
California	107.4 GW	Diablo Canyon	2,323 MW	2.2%
Florida	79.9 GW	West County Energy Center	4,263 MW	5.3%
Pennsylvania	53.1 GW	Peach Bottom	2,876 MW	5.4%
Illinois	52.5 GW	Braidwood Generation Station	2,450 MW	4.7%
New York	44.2 GW	Robert Moses Niagara	2,429 MW	5.5%
Georgia	42.7 GW	Vogtle	4,658 MW	10.9%
Arizona	40.5 GW	Palo Verde	4,210 MW	10.4%
North Carolina	39.9 GW	Roxboro	2,558 MW	6.4%
Oklahoma	35.8 GW	Muskogee	1,716 MW	4.8%

Together the 25 plants in the table hold 83.5 GW, or 6.1% of all US nameplate capacity, spread across 14 states. To match them in capacity you would need 15,760 plants of the median size of 5.3 MW, which shows how unevenly capacity is spread across sites.

A closer look at the top three

Grand Coulee has 33 operable units, which came online between 1941 and 1984; the largest is rated at 805 MW. Vogtle has 4 operable units, which came online between 1987 and 2024; the largest is rated at 1,215 MW. West County Energy Center has 12 operable units, which came online between 2009 and 2011; the largest is rated at 527 MW. The three show three different ways to reach the top of the list: a single dam built over four decades, a nuclear station that added two new reactors recently, and a gas complex of many combined-cycle units.

Ownership of the giants also follows a pattern. Of the 25 largest plants, 21 are run by electric utilities, as EIA classifies the operator (a sector that includes federal and public power), and the rest by independent power producers. Each plant page names the operator and, where the ownership file lists them, every co-owner with its share of the plant’s capacity.

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.