Brownfield & Retired Power Plant Sites in South Dakota
10 catalogued brownfield and retired-generation sites in South Dakota, listed by former capacity. Each carries an existing utility-scale grid interconnection that a new datacenter load may be able to re-use.
At a glance
What kinds of former sites are in South Dakota?
By former use, the list includes 4 natural gas, 4 oil, 1 coal, 1 Superfund. Recorded retirement dates run from January 1978 to April 2022, with 2 retirements in 2015 or later. 6 of 9 sites with a measured distance sit within 2 miles of a transmission substation.
How does South Dakota compare with other states?
South Dakota ranks 44th of 50 states and DC by number of brownfield and retired-generation sites, out of 2,085 nationally. By recorded capacity (252 MW) it ranks 46th, against 289,280 MW across all states. The state also has 1,151 scored datacenter candidate sites, 6 of them classed as brownfield sites, averaging 54.7 on the 0–100 DC Readiness scale.
Where in South Dakota are these sites?
- Beadle County · 2
- Hyde County · 2
- Minnehaha County · 1
- Pennington County · 1
- Kingsbury County · 1
- Spink County · 1
- Day County · 1
All brownfield and retired plant sites in South Dakota
| Site | Former use | Capacity | Retired | County |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pathfinder | gas | 75 MW | 2001-06-01 | Minnehaha |
| Huron | gas | 58 MW | 2022-04-01 | Beadle |
| Future CT | gas | 56 MW | — | Hyde |
| Ben French | coal | 25 MW | 2014-03-01 | Pennington |
| Lake Preston | oil | 24 MW | 1978-01-01 | Kingsbury |
| Highmore | oil | 4 MW | 2014-06-01 | Hyde |
| Redfield | gas | 4 MW | 2014-06-01 | Spink |
| Mobile Unit | oil | 4 MW | 2019-12-01 | Beadle |
| Webster IC | oil | 2 MW | 2004-04-01 | Day |
| Ellsworth Air Force Base | superfund | 0 MW | — | — |
Frequently asked questions
How many retired power plants are in South Dakota?
GridCensus lists 9 retired power plant sites in South Dakota from EIA-860 retirement records. 8 have a recorded retirement date, 2 of them in 2015 or later.
What is the largest retired power plant or brownfield site in South Dakota?
Pathfinder in Sioux Falls is the largest by recorded capacity, at 75 MW. It is followed by Huron (57.9 MW) and Future CT (56 MW).
Which power plant in South Dakota retired most recently?
Huron has the latest recorded retirement date in the state, April 2022, with 57.9 MW of capacity.
Which county in South Dakota has the most brownfield and retired plant sites?
Beadle County has the most, with 2, followed by Hyde County with 2.
How many EPA brownfield sites in South Dakota have completed cleanup?
1 of the 1 EPA-tracked sites listed for South Dakota are recorded as cleanup complete.
Looking for a specific record? The directory lists every brownfield site, A to Z.
More on South Dakota, and states with similar counts
- Datacenter candidate sites in South Dakota· 1,151 sites
- Electric substations in South Dakota· 40 named
- Brownfield candidate sites nationwide
- Brownfield sites by state
- Brownfield sites in Wyoming· 11 sites
- Brownfield sites in Delaware· 9 sites
- Brownfield sites in Nebraska· 12 sites
- Brownfield sites in West Virginia· 9 sites
About this data
Source: EIA-860 retired generating units and EPA RE-Powering America's Land contaminated-site records, as published March 6, 2026. See the methodology for how records are matched, cleaned and scored.
Cite as: GridCensus, “Brownfield and retired power plant sites in South Dakota”, https://gridcensus.com/brownfield-sites/south-dakota (data as of March 6, 2026).
Dataset updated . Screening estimates derived from public data sources.
Go deeper than the public screen
Every site and score for brownfield sites in South Dakota is free to browse. Pro adds Watchtower on 25 sites, alerts when new candidate sites, datacenters or interconnection-queue requests appear in your markets, score and capacity history, and CSV export. Enterprise adds team seats, weekly data files for all 147,272 sites, the REST API and an MCP server for AI tools.