Electric generating plantEIA plant no. 3000

Boomer Lake Station

Type
Natural Gas Steam Turbine
Status
Retired March 2022
Nameplate (when running)
28.7 MW
Units
5
In service since
1956–2004
Operator
Stillwater Utilities Authority
Location
Stillwater, Payne County, Oklahoma

Boomer Lake Station is retired. EIA's monthly generator inventory (EIA-860M, August 2026) lists every generator at this natural gas plant as retired; the last one retired in March 2022. It is not counted among Oklahoma's operating plants or in any ranking on this site.

The figures below describe the plant when it ran: equipment from EIA Form 860 (2024).

The 28.7 MW is nameplate capacity: the most this plant's generators are rated to produce, not what it actually generates. EPA eGRID reports no positive net generation for it this year.

How it works

A steam plant burning natural gas

natural gas insteamwater returns1boiler burns natural gas2steam spins turbine3generator4cooling condenses steam
  1. A boiler burns natural gas to turn water into high-pressure steam.
  2. The steam pushes through a turbine, spinning it thousands of times a minute.
  3. The turbine's shaft turns a generator, which sends power to the grid.
  4. Spent steam is cooled back into water — by a cooling tower, a lake or a river — and pumped back to the boiler.

Why the numbers look like this: a boiler and turbine this size take hours to bring up from cold, so steam plants were built to run steadily for long stretches. A steam plant with a low capacity factor is usually being held in reserve, or run only through the hottest and coldest weeks.

This plant highlighted in navy-ringed pin; other generators within 25 miles shown as fuel-colored dots.

Natural GasCoalWind

Location

Address1 Boomer Lake Station Drive
CityStillwater
CountyPayne County
StateOklahoma
ZIP74075
Coordinates36.14380, -97.06810
OperatorStillwater Utilities Authority

Generators (5)

IDTechnologyFuelNameplate capacityStatusOnline
2Natural Gas Steam TurbineNatural Gas12.7 MWRetired1959
1Natural Gas Steam TurbineNatural Gas10.0 MWRetired1956
3Petroleum LiquidsDistillate Oil2.0 MWRetired2004
4Petroleum LiquidsDistillate Oil2.0 MWRetired2004
5Petroleum LiquidsDistillate Oil2.0 MWRetired2004

Grid context

NERC RegionMRO
Balancing AuthoritySouthwest Power Pool

About Natural Gas plants

Natural gas plants are the workhorse of the modern grid. Combined-cycle units achieve very high efficiency and can ramp up and down quickly to balance variable renewables. They emit roughly half the CO₂ per MWh of coal and far less of other pollutants, but they still release upstream methane during fuel extraction.

Other plants in Payne County

View all plants in Payne County →

Explore more