Omaha Public Power District

Omaha Public Power District, or OPPD, is a public electric utility in the state of Nebraska. It is wholly owned by the Nebraska state government, and controlled by a special district. OPPD serves more than 855,000 people in Omaha and 13 surrounding counties in southeast eastern. OPPD was formed in 1946 as a political subdivision of the State of Nebraska, taking over the operations of the privately owned Nebraska Power Company. Nebraska is the only state in which all electric utilities are government owned. A publicly elected eight-member Board of Directors sets rates and policies.

History
The Nebraska Unicameral created OPPD as a division of the state government on December 2, 1946. It acquired the Maine-based Nebraska Power Company for $42,000,000 after a four-year political struggle. Prior to its acquisition NPC was the only privately owned remaining in the state. In January 1965 the Eastern Nebraska Public Power District was merged into OPPD, adding four counties to its service area. In September 1973 OPPD's Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station entered commercial service. In 1996 OPPD purchased a rail line running from Lincoln to Nebraska City from BNSF Railway. In 2012 OPPD was awarded its 12th J.D. Power and Associates award. OPPD was named "Highest in Customer Satisfaction among Midsize Utilities in the Midwest" in the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study. In 2014 OPPD joined the newly created Southwest Power Pool. In December 2019, the board of the Omaha Public Power District voted to commit to net-zero emissions by 2050. A 400- to 600-megawatt solar array is planned, as is the closing of three gas fired power units, and conversion of two coal-burning units to natural gas. In 2021 OPPD experienced its largest ever outage, affecting 188,000 customers due to a storm.

Facilities


OPPD formerly operated the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station near Fort Calhoun. After 42 years of operation (interrupted by flooding from 2011 to 2013), the plant was shut down on October 25, 2016, and is in the process of being decommissioned. OPPD operates other generating stations in North Omaha, Nebraska City, Valley, Elkhorn and in Cass County; coal, natural gas, oil, wind turbines, solar, and landfill gas are used to generate electricity at their power plants.

OPPD also purchases 81 megawatts of hydroelectricity capacity from the Western Area Power Administration. OPPD has the exclusive rights to power from two solar power stations of 5 and 81 megawatts in Fort Calhoun and Saunders County respectively.