Hopkins and Purdom: Tallahassee's Power Plants

Most Tallahassee electricity comes from two City-owned natural gas plants, Hopkins on Geddie Road and Purdom at St. Marks, backed by a small distributed plant and two airport solar farms.

The City's 2026 Ten-Year Site Plan, filed with the Florida Public Service Commission, says the Electric Utility serves approximately 124,000 customers within a 221 square mile service territory and had a total net summer capability of 737 MW and winter capability of 795 MW as of December 31, 2025. Both the Hopkins page and the Purdom page list natural gas as the primary fuel.

Solar is the third leg, and two City sources describe it differently. The site plan lists Solar Farm 1 at 20 MW and Solar Farm 4 at 42 MW nameplate, online in December 2017 and December 2019, and counts only 20 percent of their rating as firm summer capacity. The City's Tallahassee Solar page describes Solar Farm 1 at 20 megawatts on 120 acres and Solar Farm 2 at 40 megawatts on 240 acres, 60 megawatts in all. Customers in that program pay a solar rate of 5 cents per kWh in place of the fuel charge, fixed until September 30, 2037; the program is fully subscribed and enrollment has closed.

Water power was a sideline that has ended. The City told the Florida PSC in 2019 that its Lake Talquin hydro plant averaged about 17 GWh a year, less than 1 percent of its energy needs, and that FERC accepted the surrender of the license on March 13, 2019. The City had run that Jackson Bluff powerhouse on the Ochlockonee River under a federal license issued on July 14, 1982, with units installed in 1986, according to the FERC environmental assessment.

The Hopkins station is the larger Tallahassee plant, on 230 acres of land 7 miles west of the city on Geddie Road.

The City's Hopkins page lists it as built in 1971, fueled primarily by natural gas, with a capacity of 504 megawatts. It burns natural gas or oil to make steam in two boilers that drive two turbines connected to generators, and two gas turbine generators add power when needed. The plant was expanded to more than double its original size in 1977 with a second boiler and generator, and the City later converted Unit 2 to a combined cycle system under the Hopkins Unit 2 Repowering Project. The grounds, covered with oaks and pines, shelter birds, deer, alligators and a community of beavers.

The 2026 site plan fills in dates and differs on two numbers. It says Hopkins has been in commercial operation since 1970, a year earlier than the City page, and rates the plant at 484.5 MW in summer and 518.5 MW in winter, against the page's 504 megawatts. Unit 2's repowered combined cycle unit, built around a General Electric Frame 7A combustion turbine, entered commercial operation in June 2008; its original steam turbine generator dates to October 1977. The City keeps enough distillate fuel oil to run Hopkins about 3 days.

The plant runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and chemists in its laboratory perform more than 40 tests on water every day for metal contaminants, mineral precipitates and acidity, the City states, with a separate environmental monitoring facility for independent oversight. Geddie Road also leads to the Lake Talquin State Forest office at 865 Geddie Road, per FDACS.

The Purdom station is the older Tallahassee plant, built in 1952 on 63 acres beside the Saint Marks River in Wakulla County, about 20 miles south of the city.

The City's Purdom page says two of the plant's three boilers and steam turbines were retired and replaced by a combined cycle system that generates power at a rate 30 percent more efficient than older systems. Purdom Unit 8 uses the energy from the burned fuel twice, so the same fuel powers two generators instead of one, and cooling towers vent heat from the cooling water into the air as steam.

The Purdom page lists a capacity of 242 MW in its summary while its text says the plant can generate up to 301 megawatts; the 2026 site plan rates Unit 8 at 222 MW in summer and 258 MW in winter, in commercial service since July 2000. The plan adds that facility-wide emissions caps limit the use of liquid fuel at Purdom, and that the City keeps enough distillate oil to run the plant about 9 days.

Water is the local issue at St. Marks. The City says Unit 8 uses Zero-Discharge Technology, recycling treated effluent from the City of St. Marks wastewater treatment plant and a local industrial facility to reduce its dependence on river water, with no liquid discharge into the St. Marks River.

Hopkins has one combined cycle unit, two combustion turbines and five gas engines, while Purdom runs a single combined cycle unit, per the City's 2026 Tallahassee site plan.

Source: City of Tallahassee 2026 Ten-Year Site Plan, Schedule 1, which lists the Hopkins units and Substation 12 in Leon County and Purdom 8 in Wakulla County. The combined cycle and combustion turbine units can burn natural gas or diesel oil but not both at once, while the engines burn natural gas only. Hopkins 2's nameplate is the sum of a 198.9 MW combustion turbine generator and a 259.2 MW steam turbine generator, though in its current configuration the steam side is limited to about 150 MW.

Tallahassee has set a target of 100 percent net clean renewable energy by 2050, but its 2026 plan keeps Hopkins and Purdom running with no additions or retirements through 2035.

The City's Clean Energy Plan page says that through the Clean Energy Resolution, 19-R-04, the City Commission set a target of achieving 100 percent net, clean renewable energy no later than 2050, and that the resolution passed unanimously. The 2026 Ten-Year Site Plan finds no need for more firm capacity in the 2026 to 2035 period and schedules no additions or retirements, so summer and winter firm capacity are unchanged from the prior plan.

The same Tallahassee plan points to storage as the next step. Operating through recent winter storms, which drove loads close to records, reinforced the City's view that energy storage could reduce costs, increase short-duration capacity, lower risk and cut dependence on natural gas. The City is not subject to the Florida Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act, so the PSC sets no numeric conservation goals for it, though the plan states the City expects to continue its demand side management programs.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, on the City's Hopkins, Purdom, Tallahassee Solar and Clean Energy Plan pages, its 2026 Ten-Year Site Plan and 2019 data response at the Florida PSC, the FERC Jackson Bluff assessment, and the FDACS Lake Talquin State Forest page.