Geothermal Energy Examples: Real Plants, States and Countries

If you searched for geothermal energy examples, you want names, places and numbers, not another definition. This page gives you exactly that: the seven US states that generated geothermal electricity in 2025 and how much each contributed, the largest geothermal field in the world and the company that operates thirteen plants there, fourteen individual power plants with their county, size, developer and technology, two countries that lead the world in different ways, and the one city where geothermal heat reaches "most of the buildings."

The sourcing rule on this page is simple: a number carries the year its source attaches to it, and where the source attaches none, we say so. If you need the basics first, start with what geothermal energy is and come back.

The United States in 2025: Seven States

The US Energy Information Administration states it in one sentence: "In 2025, the United States had geothermal power plants in seven states, which produced about 0.4%, or 16 billion kilowatthours (BkWh) of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation." The EIA labels the underlying data, released February 2026, as preliminary. That is the national picture. Geothermal is a small slice of the American grid, and it comes from a short list of places.

Here is the whole list. The middle column is each state's share of US geothermal generation in 2025; the right column is what geothermal contributed to that state's own electricity generation in the same year.

Two things stand out. First, concentration: California and Nevada together account for 93.3% of US geothermal electricity in 2025, and the other five states share the remaining 6.7%. Second, the two columns tell different stories. California produces the largest volume by a wide margin, yet geothermal was 5.2% of California's own generation in 2025. Nevada produced about a third as much geothermal electricity as California in 2025, but geothermal was a larger part of Nevada's mix, at 8.6%. Hawaii is the other case where the right column is bigger than the left: 1.6% of US geothermal output, but 2.7% of Hawaii's own generation in 2025.

The same asymmetry shows up between countries; see the Indonesia and Kenya section below.

The Geysers: The Largest Geothermal Field

If a student can name one geothermal example, it should be this one. The US Department of Energy's educational-resources page states: "The United States has the most electricity-generating geothermal capacity in the world, including the largest geothermal field: The Geysers."

The DOE also names the operator and the scale: "Calpine Corporation operates 13 geothermal power plants that collectively generate 725 megawatts (MW) of electricity." Thirteen plants at one field, run by one company, is the concrete example the query is looking for. One limitation to carry with that figure: the DOE page states no year for the 725 MW, so we cannot attach one, and you should not either if you cite it.

For a sense of proportion, the EIA's Electric Power Annual reports 4,002.1 MW of nameplate capacity across all US utility-scale geothermal generators in 2024. The 725 MW figure and the 4,002.1 MW figure come from different sources, use different capacity definitions, and the first carries no year, so they should not be divided into a percentage. They do make the scale of The Geysers legible: thirteen plants under one operator at a single field, measured in hundreds of megawatts, against a national fleet measured in thousands.

The DOE educational page cited here does not describe which plant design The Geysers uses. The three designs, and how to tell them apart, are covered in our guide to geothermal power plants.

The US Fleet in 2024: Generators and Capacity

The EIA's Electric Power Annual, Table 4.3, gives a single row for utility-scale geothermal in 2024:

The number worth memorising is 163: that is how many utility-scale geothermal generators the United States had in 2024. Note that this is a count of generators, not plants, and the cited sources give no plant count for 2024. The DOE's 2013 Geothermal Market Report states that "As of the end of 2012, 63 utility-scale geothermal facilities were in operation in the United States," a count of facilities at a different date, and the DOE's "13 geothermal power plants" at The Geysers is a count of a different thing again.

The capacity columns deserve a closer look, because the three figures are far apart. Nameplate capacity in 2024 was 4,002.1 MW. Net summer capacity was 2,695.5 MW, and net winter capacity was 3,162.2 MW. Net winter capacity exceeds net summer capacity by 466.7 MW, or about 17% of the summer figure, and both sit well below nameplate. The EIA table reports the figures; it does not explain the gap. What the gap means in practice is that a geothermal fleet's deliverable capacity is not one number. If you quote US geothermal capacity, say which of the three you mean and which year it applies to. A nameplate figure and a net summer figure for the same year differ by more than 1,300 MW in 2024.

The fleet had roughly 4,000 MW of nameplate capacity in 2024 and generated 16 BkWh in 2025. Those are different years and different quantities, so do not compute a capacity factor from them. Together they describe a resource that is small in the national total but built from a concrete, countable set of machines in seven states.

Fourteen Named Plants Entering Service 2009–2012

The DOE's 2013 Geothermal Market Report lists fourteen named plants. Its Table 2, titled "Utility-Scale U.S. Geothermal Installations Entering Service 2009-2012," is a historical record of what entered service in that four-year window, drawn from a report published in 2013. It is not a current fleet list, and it does not tell you what has been built since 2012 or whether every plant on it is still running. It is valuable because it names the plant, the county, the size, the year, the technology, and the developer, which is precisely what a student, teacher or researcher hunting for examples needs.

Three footnotes travel with this table, from the report itself. Capacity is "Initial Installed Capacity as reported by firms to GEA," meaning the figures were reported by the developers rather than independently measured. Expansion figures "do not include the previously installed capacity," so Stillwater's 47 MW, for example, is the 2009 addition and not the whole site. And the Stillwater figure is "Not including solar capacity located at the same site."

One arithmetic point to carry with it. Adding the fourteen rows above gives 346.85 MW, and the report's own prose agrees: the sentence introducing the table describes them as "a combined 347 MW". The table's printed total, however, is 310.55 MW for 2009–2012. That figure is exactly the row sum minus Neal Hot Springs (30.1 MW) and Dixie Valley (6.2 MW), which points to two rows being left out of the table's arithmetic. The report does not acknowledge the discrepancy. All three figures appear on this page so that a reader who finds the report is not left guessing.

The Type column tells the clearest story: thirteen of the fourteen plants that entered service in the United States between 2009 and 2012 were binary plants. The single exception was John L. Featherstone in Imperial County, California, a 49.9 MW flash plant that entered service in 2012. What makes a plant "binary," and the cycle at its heart, is explained in our guide to the organic Rankine cycle. The 2013 report's table does not state the reasons, but the record of that window shows the United States building binary plants almost exclusively.

The Developer column names the companies the report records as having developed each project, not current operators. Ormat appears five times (McGinness Hills, Tuscarora, Puna Expansion, Jersey Valley and North Brawley); Enel North America twice, both in Fallon, Nevada, in 2009 (Stillwater and Salt Wells); U.S. Geothermal twice in 2012 (Neal Hot Springs in Oregon and San Emido Repower in Nevada); and Terra-Gen twice (Dixie Valley in 2012 and Beowawe 2 in 2011). EnergySource, Alternative Earth Resources Inc. and Raser Technologies each appear once.

Geographically, Nevada dominates: nine of the fourteen entries are in Nevada, two in California, and one each in Oregon, Hawaii and Utah, which matches the state table above, where Nevada was second only to California in 2025. Sizes ranged from 1.9 MW (Beowawe 2, an expansion in 2011) to 50 MW (Blue Mountain and North Brawley, both greenfield in 2009). Nine of the fourteen were greenfield, meaning new sites, and five were expansions of existing ones.

Indonesia and Kenya: Two Ways to Lead

International examples are where the "volume versus share" distinction from the state table matters most. The EIA reports, for 2022: "Indonesia was the top geothermal electricity producer at about 17 BkWh—which was about 5% of Indonesia's total electricity generation. Kenya, the seventh-highest geothermal electricity producer, produced about 5 BkWh, which was equal to about 43% of Kenya's annual electricity generation."

Put those side by side. Indonesia led the world on absolute geothermal output in 2022 at about 17 BkWh, but that was about 5% of its total generation. Kenya produced less than a third of that, about 5 BkWh in 2022, and ranked seventh in the world, yet geothermal supplied about 43% of Kenya's electricity that year. Indonesia leads on volume; Kenya leads on dependence. Which one is the better "example" depends on the question. If the question is "which country makes the most geothermal electricity," the answer in 2022 is Indonesia. If the question is "which country's grid relies on geothermal," Kenya's 43% in 2022 is the number to quote.

A caution on comparing these to the United States: the Indonesia and Kenya figures are for 2022, and the US figure of 16 BkWh is for 2025. Those are different years, so they should not be ranked against each other. What the DOE does state, separately, is that "The United States has the most electricity-generating geothermal capacity in the world," a statement about capacity rather than generation, and one the DOE page publishes without a year.

For share, the comparison across years is still telling in rough terms: Kenya at about 43% in 2022, Indonesia at about 5% in 2022, Nevada at 8.6% in 2025, California at 5.2% in 2025, and the United States as a whole at about 0.4% in 2025. The geothermal share of a grid ranges from a rounding error to nearly half, depending entirely on where you are.

Heating Examples: Reykjavik

Geothermal energy is not only electricity. It also heats buildings directly, and the example the EIA names is in Iceland. The EIA states: "A district heating system provides heat for most of the buildings in Reykjavik, Iceland." That is one network supplying heat to most of a capital city's buildings.

Two limits on that example. The EIA source gives no building count and no year for the Reykjavik statement, so we cannot report either, and any figure you see attached to it elsewhere is coming from a different source. What the EIA does establish is the type of example: a district heating system, one network distributing geothermal heat to a city's buildings. How such a network is built and why it suits places with the right geology is covered in our guide to geothermal district heating, and Iceland's wider use of the resource is covered in our guide to geothermal energy in Iceland.

For the range of uses geothermal energy serves in principle, see what geothermal energy is used for.

Residential Examples: What the Record Shows

The residential example of geothermal energy is the ground-source heat pump. How one works is explained in our guide to how geothermal heating works.

What the record does not give is a number. The cited sources publish no count of residential ground-source heat pumps installed in the United States. That means this page cannot tell you how many American homes use geothermal heating, and any figure you find elsewhere should be checked for its source and its year before you repeat it.

That gap is worth keeping in mind. The utility-scale electricity side is counted carefully by the EIA, down to the generator: 163 in 2024. The residential side is not counted in the sources cited here. The examples on this page therefore lean toward power plants not because heating is unimportant but because power plants are what the public record names and measures.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best-known example of geothermal energy?

The Geysers. The US Department of Energy describes it as "the largest geothermal field" in the world and states that "Calpine Corporation operates 13 geothermal power plants that collectively generate 725 megawatts (MW) of electricity" there. The DOE gives no year for that figure.

Which US states use geothermal energy?

Seven states had geothermal power plants in 2025, per the EIA: California (68.6% of US geothermal generation), Nevada (24.7%), Utah (3.0%), Hawaii (1.6%), Oregon (1.2%), Idaho (0.5%) and New Mexico (0.4%). The state where geothermal made up the largest share of the state's own generation in 2025 was Nevada, at 8.6%.

Which country produces the most geothermal electricity?

Indonesia, in the EIA's 2022 figures, at about 17 BkWh, which was about 5% of Indonesia's total electricity generation. The country that depended on geothermal the most in the same EIA figures was Kenya, seventh in output at about 5 BkWh, which was about 43% of Kenya's generation in 2022.

How much of US electricity comes from geothermal?

About 0.4% in 2025, or 16 BkWh of utility-scale generation, according to the EIA.

How many geothermal power plants are in the United States?

The EIA's fleet figure counts generators rather than plants: 163 utility-scale geothermal generators in 2024. The DOE's 2013 Geothermal Market Report gives a count for an earlier date: "As of the end of 2012, 63 utility-scale geothermal facilities were in operation in the United States." That figure counts facilities, it is dated to the end of 2012, and the cited sources give no plant or facility count matching the 2024 generator figure.

Can you name specific geothermal power plants and their developers?

Yes. The DOE's 2013 Geothermal Market Report lists fourteen utility-scale plants that entered service from 2009 to 2012, with developer and county for each; the full table is reproduced above. Examples include Blue Mountain in Humboldt County, Nevada (50 MW, 2009, Alternative Earth Resources Inc.), North Brawley in Brawley, California (50 MW, 2009, Ormat), and John L. Featherstone in Imperial County, California (49.9 MW, 2012, EnergySource), the only flash plant on the list. The list is historical and does not describe the current fleet.

What is an example of geothermal heating rather than electricity?

Reykjavik, Iceland. The EIA states that "A district heating system provides heat for most of the buildings in Reykjavik, Iceland." The EIA gives no building count and no year for that statement.

How many homes in the US use geothermal heat pumps?

The cited sources publish no count of residential ground-source heat pumps installed in the United States, so this page does not give one.