Home / Power plants / Colorado / Blue Mesa

Blue Mesa

Hydro power plant · Gunnison County, Colorado

Nameplate capacity
86 MW
Rank in Colorado
#65
of 326 plants
In service since
1967
September 1967

Details

Primary fuel
Hydro
Technology
Conventional Hydroelectric
Operator
U S Bureau of Reclamation
County
Gunnison County
Generating units
2
Share of state capacity
0.38%
Rank among hydro plants in Colorado
#5 of 49
EIA plant code
512

Generating units

Individual generating units at Blue Mesa
UnitTechnologyNameplateSummerOnlineStatus
1Conventional Hydroelectric43 MW43 MW1967Operating
2Conventional Hydroelectric43 MW43 MW1967Operating

Nameplate is the maximum rated output; summer capacity is what the unit can reliably deliver on a hot day, which is typically lower.

Similarly sized plants in Colorado

About this data

From EIA’s inventory of operable generators, May 2026 release. Capacity is nameplate — the maximum rated output of the equipment, not what the plant actually generates over a year, which depends on how often it runs. A 86 MW solar plant and a 86 MW nuclear plant have the same entry here and produce very different amounts of electricity.

“In service since” is the earliest in-service date among the units still listed, so a site rebuilt around newer equipment can read as younger than the site itself. All Colorado power plants · What Colorado actually generates