Power plants and the grid in Iowa
Iowa has 319 power plants with 23.9 GW of capacity, wind the largest share at 13.4 GW. The map shows 55 data centers in Iowa. Its interconnection queue holds 123 active requests for 23.9 GW.
Capacity by fuel
319 power plants with 23.9 GW of capacity, planned generators left out.
- Wind: 13.4 GW from 137 plants (56%)
- Coal: 4.9 GW from 8 plants (20%)
- Natural gas: 3.8 GW from 37 plants (16%)
- Solar: 794 MW from 34 plants (3%)
- Oil: 792 MW from 88 plants (3%)
- Hydro: 209 MW from 4 plants (1%)
- Biomass: 23 MW from 6 plants (under 1%)
- Battery storage: 10 MW from 4 plants (under 1%)
- Other: 4 MW from 1 plant (under 1%)
Largest plants
- Walter Scott Jr Energy Center: Coal, 1.5 GW
- Louisa: Coal, 746 MW
- Ottumwa: Coal, 714 MW
- Marshalltown Generating Station: Natural gas, 668 MW
- George Neal South: Coal, 647 MW
- Emery Station: Natural gas, 539 MW
- George Neal North: Coal, 510 MW
- Greater Des Moines: Natural gas, 504 MW
- Highland Wind Project (IA): Wind, 500 MW
- Orient Wind Farm: Wind, 500 MW
Largest plants near Des Moines
- Greater Des Moines: Natural gas, 504 MW, 8 km away
- Pleasant Hill: Natural gas, 154 MW, 8 km away
- Sycamore (IA): Natural gas, 141 MW, 11 km away
- River Hills: Natural gas, 113 MW, 1 km away
- Ames Electric Services Power Plant: Natural gas, 109 MW, 50 km away
Largest plants near Davenport
- Louisa: Coal, 746 MW, 50 km away
- Muscatine Plant #1: Coal, 249 MW, 43 km away
- Archer Daniels Midland Clinton: Coal, 180 MW, 43 km away
- Wilton: Oil, 9 MW, 36 km away
- Durant: Oil, 4 MW, 27 km away
Planned and under construction
9 generators planned, under construction or testing, 1.1 GW in all, not counted above.
- Solar: 777 MW
- Wind: 252 MW
- Natural gas: 33 MW
Grid operators
- MISO (ISO or RTO): 298 plants
- SPP (ISO or RTO): 18 plants
- Associated Electric Cooperative (AECI): 3 plants
Data centers
55 data center sites on the map.
- Polk County: 21 sites
- Pottawattamie County: 15 sites
- Dallas County: 6 sites
- Linn County: 5 sites
- Warren County: 3 sites
- Operators with the most sites: Microsoft (16), Google (15), Meta (8), Cologix (2), Edged (2), Enseva (2), QTS (2), Apple (1), Applied Digital (1), Cielo Digital Infrastructure (1)
Interconnection queue
123 active requests to connect 23.9 GW of new generation and storage, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Queued Up data.
- Wind: 7.3 GW in 36 requests
- Natural gas: 6.4 GW in 17 requests
- Solar: 5.2 GW in 37 requests
- Battery storage: 3.3 GW in 22 requests
- Nuclear: 1.3 GW in 5 requests
- Other: 452 MW in 4 requests
- Oil: 11 MW in 2 requests
Sources
Power plants: EIA-860M (US); NRCan NACEI (Canada, Mexico); WRI GPPD (Mexico); OpenStreetMap via Geofabrik (Canada, Mexico gap fill); USGS USWTDB/USPVDB; EPA eGRID; Natural Earth admin-1; HIFLD control areas; location attributes from WorldPop (R2025A), Global Solar Atlas PVOUT, Global Wind Atlas 4, USFS Wildfire Hazard Potential, the USGS National Seismic Hazard Model and the previous publish's lines and substations; water distances from OpenStreetMap via Geofabrik; gas distances and county queue from the previous publish's EIA gas pipelines and LBNL Queued Up requests; nearest city from Natural Earth populated places; cooling degree days from NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals; elevation and slope from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (ESA, via AWS Open Data); water stress from WRI Aqueduct 4.0; ozone nonattainment from the EPA Green Book; drought from the U.S. Drought Monitor; tribal land from US Census TIGER/Line. License: ODbL (derivative database; EIA content is public domain, NRCan OGL-Canada, WRI GPPD CC BY 4.0; location attributes from WorldPop, Global Solar Atlas, Global Wind Atlas, LBNL Queued Up and WRI Aqueduct CC BY 4.0, USFS, USGS, EIA, NOAA, EPA, US Census and Natural Earth public domain, Copernicus DEM GLO-30 © DLR e.V. and Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, the U.S. Drought Monitor courtesy of NDMC)
Places gazetteer (cities, airports, regions): Natural Earth populated places; OurAirports; Natural Earth admin-1; Wattlas curated places. License: Public domain
Data centers: Epoch AI (CC BY); OpenStreetMap via the public Overpass API (ODbL, © OpenStreetMap contributors); Ringmast4r Global-Data-Center-Map (custom permissive license, attribution required); location attributes from WorldPop (R2025A), Global Solar Atlas PVOUT, Global Wind Atlas 4, USFS Wildfire Hazard Potential, the USGS National Seismic Hazard Model and the previous publish's lines and substations; gas distances and county queue from the previous publish's EIA gas pipelines and LBNL Queued Up requests; nearest city from Natural Earth populated places; generation within 20 km from the previous publish's plants; cooling degree days from NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals; elevation and slope from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (ESA, via AWS Open Data); water stress from WRI Aqueduct 4.0; ozone nonattainment from the EPA Green Book; drought from the U.S. Drought Monitor; tribal land from US Census TIGER/Line. License: CC BY; ODbL; custom permissive; WRI Aqueduct CC BY 4.0; USFS, USGS, EIA, NOAA, EPA, US Census and Natural Earth public domain; Copernicus DEM GLO-30 © DLR e.V. and Airbus Defence and Space GmbH; the U.S. Drought Monitor courtesy of NDMC
Interconnection queue requests: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and GridTracker, "Queued Up". License: CC BY 4.0
States and provinces (simplified polygons): Natural Earth 10m admin-1. License: Public domain