Explore this map to see where your electricity comes from!
Each dot represents an electric power plant, sized according to the amount of electrical energy it generated in the indicated year, and colored according to its primary energy source. You can zoom and pan the map, adjust the scale of the dots, and uncheck some types of power plants to focus on other types. You can also use the popup menu to scale the dots according to nameplate capacity or CO2 emissions.
The URL displayed in your browser’s address bar stores all the map settings, so you can copy, save, and share your settings via the link.
Click or tap on any dot to see the data for that power plant, along with a link to a satellite image of its location in Google Maps, and a link to its monthly generation data in the Energy Information Administration's Electricity Data Browser. Plant capacity is measured in megawatts (MW), or millions of watts. A typical American household uses electrical energy at an average rate of about 1000 watts, so a small 1-megawatt power plant can power about a thousand homes, while a large 1000-megawatt power plant can power about a million homes. A plant’s annual net generation is its average power output multiplied by the number of hours in a year (8760), and is measured in megawatt-hours (MWh). A plant’s capacity factor is its average output as a percentage of its nameplate capacity. Nuclear plants tend to have the highest capacity factors, followed by coal, gas, and hydro. The capacity factors of wind and solar farms are limited by the availability of wind and sunshine at each location.
The data is from the EPA’s eGRID databases, based in large part on data from the Energy Information Administration (forms 860 and 923). Only the more recent datasets include plants in Puerto Rico, and for these there is no generation history link because they’re not in the EIA data browser.
As you can see, America’s electric power sector has been rapidly changing, with coal use plummeting while gas, wind, and solar power increase. Here is a graph of total U.S. electricity generation, by source, from 1950 through 2023:
Here’s the same data plotted on a logarithmic scale, without the stacking:
The year 2007 was an approximate turning point for U.S. electricity, when gas, wind, and solar power began to replace coal. Total generation rose almost without interruption through 2007, then was essentially flat for more than a decade, but may now again be on the rise.
Technical details: Some power plants obtain significant amounts of energy from more than one source, so the dot colors on the map can be somewhat misleading for these; the popup text will then indicate what percentage of the electricity was generated from the primary source. These multi-fuel plants also make the displayed totals for individual fuel types somewhat inaccurate. About 75 of the power plants in the 2007 dataset lack accurate coordinates and are plotted at their county centroids; these are indicated by an asterisk (*) after the county name in the popup information. The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are carbon dioxide (CO2), but some plants emit other greenhouse gases as well, so CO2 equivalent, or CO2e, is used here. The “Other” category includes waste heat, process gas, storage batteries, and unknown fuels. The datasets contain quite a few power plants whose net generation for the year was zero or negative, and you can see these by sizing the dots according to nameplate capacity. Some plants with zero or negative generation were in the process of starting up or shutting down, while others are energy storage facilities—either hydroelectric or batteries (included in “Other”). Rooftop solar panels and other “behind-the-meter” generation are not included in the data shown on the map, though the two static charts do include it; the Energy Information Administration estimates that small-scale solar generation is about 40% as much as utility-scale solar generation.
You can find related maps and visualizations on many other web sites:
- eGRID Data Explorer can display essentially all of the eGRID data for 2018 through 2022, including many types of emissions and aggregations by state and by various grid regions.
- The U.S. Wind Turbine Database Viewer maps all U.S. wind farms down to the level of individual wind turbines, while the U.S. Solar Photovoltaic Database Viewer shows the actual footprints of U.S. solar farms (excluding a handful of solar thermal facilities). These amazingly detailed interactive maps were created by the U.S. Geological Survey, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and American Clean Power.
- Chris Loer’s electricitytransition.com site is an amazing visualization of how U.S. electricity generation has changed on a month-by-month basis, from 2001 through 2020. You can Zoom in to see power plants mapped as individual dots.
- EIA’s U.S. Energy Mapping System maps not just power plants but also an incredible variety of other energy infrastructure including transmission lines and mining/drilling areas.
- CarbonBrief has a nice interactive map showing U.S. power plants by nameplate capacity and energy source as of 2017, along with some related graphics and insightful narrative.
- The Washington Post has a well-designed set of static maps of U.S. power plants, last updated in 2017.
- The Solar Energy Industry Association has an interactive map of major U.S. solar farms, including those still under construction or under development.
- The Sierra Club has a map of just coal-fired power plants in the U.S., focusing on their retirement status and providing a good visualization of how quickly they’re shutting down.
- Here is an interactive chart of all primary energy use in the U.S. (not just electricity), broken down by source, since 1800.
- For maps of power plants in the rest of the world, the best source I know of is Global Energy Monitor. For country-level data on energy and electricity, there's always Our World in Data.
- 4C Offshore maintains a detailed international map of offshore wind farms, existing and proposed.
This page was created by Daniel V. Schroeder, Physics Department, Weber State University. Use your browser’s View Source or Page Source command to view the source code and open-source (MIT) license. Links to the data files are in the source code.
This interactive map uses my personal Mapbox free “starter” account, which has a limit of 50,000 map views per month. I'm not sure what constitutes a map view or how likely it is that the limit will be reached. Please contact me if you encounter difficulties.