Here is one of the non-hydro plants we have come across.

No, it is not a nuke plant: the smokestacks give it away. This is Plant Bowen, one of Georgia Power's primary coal-fired baseload plants. We caught a couple of pictures of it on the way back from one of our DeSoto State Park trips.

This plant is good for 3,160 Megawatts, burning about 8.7 Million TONS of coal annually.

At first, we thought that this is Georgia Power's highest output plant, which explains this confluence of transmission lines. However, we have since discovered that on their website, Georgia Power lists only their leased or owned capacity of a plant. So, if they share a plant with another company, the total output is not given. Turns out that Plant Scherer, near Forsyth, GA, is 3,520 Megawatt Plant. But, even though Georgia Power operates it, it only owns outright about 750 Megawatts of capacity there. It leases or shares the rest with several other power companies, one of them being Oglethorpe Power Corporation.

Check here for come more information about Georgia Power's and Southern Company's coal plants.

In the future we hope to do an official "quest", maybe even take a tour of the plant. When we do, you will see the new pix here. Stay tuned!