Near you, owned by your utility, bought by your utility
Field note 02, 2024, WA, MT
What is the difference between the plants near a utility's customers, the plants it owns, and the power it buys?
Puget Sound Energy serves a million electric customers around Puget Sound. The plants nearest them are mostly not the company's; the plants the company owns are mostly elsewhere; and a third of the electricity it sells is bought from other sellers under contracts whose prices it reports to federal regulators. Three maps of the same utility, three different answers to "where does my power come from".
Near you is a reporting boundary, not a supply
Source & method
Sum of operating nameplate MW over published plants whose reported balancing authority code is this BA; a reporting relationship, not a footprint
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
38 of 38 plants included.
Reported operating capacity; missing components stay missing
core_eia__codes_balancing_authorities.parquet; code=PSEI
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
Sum of operating generator nameplate MW at plants where this organization is the reported operator
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
19 of 19 plants included.
Reported operating capacity; partial plant/unit coverage is marked
out_eia__yearly_utilities.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; utility_id_eia=15500
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Turn on the map for Puget Sound Energy and you see the plants that report to Puget Sound Energy as their balancing authority: 2,960.3 MW of operating capacity, most of it gas turbines along the I-5 corridor and wind in the Kittitas hills. Nearness on that map means the plant's output is balanced inside the company's area, an accounting boundary defined by who keeps supply and demand matched second by second. It says nothing about who bought the electricity or who owns the machine.
The company itself operates 2,590.8 MW, which is a fraction of what sits inside its own boundary. A plant a few miles from a customer's house can belong to a merchant generator selling to a trader in another state; the wires it uses are the same either way.
Plants inside PSE's balancing area ↗(opens the atlas in a new tab)
Owned is a ledger entry, often far away
Source & method
Sum over operating generators of nameplate MW x this organization's ownership fraction (reported schedule or EIA-860 schedule-4 default)
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
17 of 17 plants included.
out_eia__yearly_utilities.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; utility_id_eia=15500
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
Sum of generator nameplate MW with operational status code OP in the inventory year; one row per generator; unscaled by ownership
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
2 of 2 operating generators included.
out_eia__yearly_generators.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; plant_id_eia=6076
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
Sum of EIA-923 annual net generation over the plant's unique prime-mover x energy-source rows; negative values (pumping, station use) retained
2024 calendar year · reported · derived · valid · final
3 of 3 plant x prime-mover x fuel rows included.
out_eia923__yearly_generation_fuel_combined.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; plant_id_eia=6076
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
Sum of operating generator nameplate MW at plants where this organization is the reported operator
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
2 of 2 plants included.
Reported operating capacity; partial plant/unit coverage is marked
out_eia__yearly_utilities.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; utility_id_eia=15298
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Explore Colstrip Steam Electric Station ↗
Ownership is a different map. Puget Sound Energy owns 3,161.3 MW of operating capacity, and the largest piece of it is not in Washington at all. Colstrip Steam Electric Station in eastern Montana has 1,647.4 MW of operating capacity across six owners and generated 9,028,457 MWh in 2024. The company that runs it, Talen Montana, operates 1,647.4 MW and owns almost none of it; Puget Sound Energy is an owner that does not operate.
The atlas records ownership as a share of each generator, from the schedule the operator files with EIA, so a utility's "owned" capacity is a sum of fractions: a quarter of this unit, half of that one. It is a claim on output and a share of cost, and it sits on the company's balance sheet whether or not the electricity ever crosses the Cascades to a customer.
Colstrip on the generation map ↗(opens the atlas in a new tab)
Bought is a filing with a price on it
Partial or uncertain coverage: 95 named sellers; 3 adjustment and 2 market-settlement rows and the filing total row excluded
Source & method
FERC Form 1 Schedule 326 total settlement over named sellers (adjustment rows excluded), nominal dollars for the report year
2025 calendar year · reported · derived · suspect · final
117 of 119 native rows included.
95 named sellers; 3 adjustment and 2 market-settlement rows and the filing total row excluded
utility_id_ferc1=162; report_year=2025
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
FERC Form 1 Schedule 326 purchased MWh over named sellers (purchased_mwh through 2020, purchased other than storage from 2021)
2025 calendar year · reported · derived · valid · final
119 of 119 native rows included.
Sum of reported MWh on named counterparty rows; missing cells are excluded and coverage is explicit
utility_id_ferc1=162; report_year=2025
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
FERC Form 1 Schedule 300 sales to ultimate consumers plus sales for resale, nominal dollars
2025 calendar year · reported · direct · valid · final
The form's own electric operating revenues total (Schedule 300), as filed
utility_id_ferc1=162; report_year=2025
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
Sum of generator nameplate MW with operational status code OP in the inventory year; one row per generator; unscaled by ownership
2024 inventory · reported · derived · valid · final
1 of 1 operating generators included.
out_eia__yearly_generators.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; plant_id_eia=3845
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗The third map is the one most people mean by "where does my power come from", and until this release it was the one the atlas could not draw. Investor-owned utilities file an annual report with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that lists every seller they bought power from, with the energy and the dollars ([1]). In 2025 Puget Sound Energy paid 1,165,290,255 USD for 18,492,408 MWh from named sellers, against electric operating revenue of 3,935,546,817 USD.
The sellers are named as filed, and where the atlas has reviewed the match they link to a page. The largest are a merchant gas plant in Grays Harbor County, Powerex, the Canadian marketer that sells British Columbia's surplus, TransAlta Centralia Generation, whose Centralia Generating Facility coal unit holds 729.9 MW of operating capacity, and Chelan County PUD, whose Columbia River dams the company buys from under long-term contracts. None of these plants is owned by Puget Sound Energy, and only one of them reports into its balancing area. Rows the company files as adjustments, such as market settlements and deferrals, are listed separately and never counted as sellers.
Public power tells the same story without the filing. Snohomish, Seattle and Tacoma do not file Form 1, so their purchases appear in the atlas as annual-report totals and as the state's fuel mix, not as a seller-by-seller table; the page says so rather than leaving a blank.
Centralia on the generation map ↗(opens the atlas in a new tab)
Disclosed is the state's accounting of all three
Source & method
Washington Fuel Mix Disclosure: total MWh across fuel categories for the claimant's Washington customers, including line losses, for the report year
2024 calendar year · reported · direct · valid · final
15 of 15 native rows included.
Washington customers only for multi-state utilities; includes line losses
Claimant ID=90
Publisher & attribution ↗ Cite this released fact ↗Source & method
revenue_usd / (sales_mwh x 10) over bundled (full-service) rows only; a realized average, not a tariff or marginal rate
2024 calendar year · reported · derived · valid · final
1 of 1 native rows with both revenue and sales included.
core_eia861__yearly_sales.parquet; report_date=2024-01-01; utility_id_eia=15500; state=WA; customer_class=residential; business_model=retail; service_type=bundled
Publisher & attribution ↗Washington then asks every retail supplier for one more number each year: the fuel mix of what it sold, with the plants it claims and the certificates behind them ([3]). Puget Sound Energy disclosed 20,666,437 MWh of Washington sales for 2024, about a third natural gas, a quarter hydro, a fifth wind and a sixth coal, computed from the plants it owns, the contracts it declared and the small share it takes from BPA.
That mix is what a customer paying 14.63 cents/kWh on average in 2024, or the tariff rate on this year's sheet ([2]), is buying on paper. It reconciles the three maps: owned plants and contracted plants are claimed, the rest is unspecified market power, and nearness never enters into it. The atlas shows each of the three as its own record with its own source, and lets the reader see where they disagree.
Every plant PSE owns or operates ↗(opens the atlas in a new tab)
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Context sources
[1] Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — Form 1, Annual Report of Major Electric Utilities, Schedule 326 Purchased Power
Each investor-owned respondent lists every seller it bought power or exchanged energy with during the year, the purchase type, demand and energy charges, MWh and the total settlement in dollars; public power and BPA do not file the form.
[2] Puget Sound Energy — Summary of total current electric prices, effective 2026-05-01
Residential Schedule 7 basic charge $7.49 per month and energy charges of $0.148363 for the first 600 kWh and $0.167780 above, plus a power cost adjustment of $0.038719 per kWh and a Residential Exchange credit of $0.006648 per kWh, bundled from the company's adjustment schedules.
[3] Washington State Department of Commerce — Fuel Mix Disclosure, calendar year 2024 report and data extracts
Each retail supplier's Washington sales by fuel category, computed from declared resources, the BPA system mix and unspecified purchases; a declared resource needs ownership or an auditable contract and its renewable energy certificate.