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Company type | Publicly owned |
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Predecessor | Nebraska Power Company |
Founded | December 2, 1946 |
Headquarters | Energy Plaza 444 South 16th Mall, |
Area served | Eastern Nebraska |
Key people |
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Services | Electricity |
Revenue | 1,428,905,000 United States dollar (2023) ![]() |
Number of employees | 1,797 (2019) |
Website | www |
Footnotes /references [1] |
Omaha Public Power District (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 US state in which all electric utilities are government owned. A publicly elected eight-member Board of Directors sets rates and policies.
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 ($656 million in 2023) after a four-year political struggle. Prior to its acquisition, NPC was the only privately owned remaining in the state. [2] 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 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 the conversion of two coal-burning units to natural gas. [3] In 2021, due to a storm, OPPD experienced its largest-ever outage, affecting 188,000 customers. [4] [5]
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. [6] In 2012, OPPD was awarded its 12th J.D. Power and Associates award.
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. [8] 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 privately-operated solar power stations of 5 and 81 megawatts in Fort Calhoun and Saunders County respectively. [9]
Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and generates and distributes electric power to 3 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of $11 billion and employs more than 13,000 people.
Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles.
Puget Sound Energy, Inc. (PSE) is an energy utility company based in the U.S. state of Washington that provides electrical power and natural gas to the Puget Sound region. The utility serves electricity to more than 1.2 million customers in Island, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Skagit, Thurston, and Whatcom counties, and provides natural gas to 877,000 customers in King, Kittitas, Lewis, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties. The company's electric and natural gas service area spans 6,000 square miles (16,000 km2).
Cooper Nuclear Station (CNS) is a boiling water reactor (BWR) type nuclear power plant located on a 1,251-acre (506 ha) site near Brownville, Nebraska between Missouri River mile markers 532.9 and 532.5, on Nebraska's border with Missouri. It is the largest single-unit electrical generator in Nebraska.
Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the principal subsidiary of NextEra Energy Inc., is the largest power utility in Florida. It is a Juno Beach, Florida-based power utility company serving roughly 5 million customers and 11 million people in Florida. It is a rate-regulated electric utility that generates, transmits, distributes and sells electric energy. In 2020, the company was ranked as the nation's most reliable electric power utility for the fifth time in six years.
Duke Energy Corporation is an American electric power and natural gas holding company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company ranked as the 141st largest company in the United States in 2024 – its highest-ever placement on the Fortune 500 list.
The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is a shut-down nuclear power plant located on 660 acres (2.7 km2) between Fort Calhoun, and Blair, Nebraska adjacent to the Missouri River between mile markers 645.6 and 646.0. The utility has an easement for another 580 acres (2.3 km2) which is maintained in a natural state. The power plant is owned by the Omaha Public Power District of Omaha, Nebraska. When operational, the plant accounted for 25 percent of OPPD's net generation capabilities.
Exelon Corporation is a public utility headquartered in Chicago, and incorporated in Pennsylvania. Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the United States by revenue and is the largest regulated electric utility in the United States with approximately 10 million customers. The company is ranked 99th on the Fortune 500.
Constellation Energy Corporation is an American energy company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The company provides electric power, natural gas, and energy management services. It has approximately two million customers across the continental United States.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is a community-owned electric utility serving Sacramento County and parts of Placer County. It is one of the ten largest publicly owned utilities in the United States, generating the bulk of its power through natural gas and large hydroelectric generation plants. SMUD's green power (renewable) energy output was estimated as 33.8% in 2020.
Consumers Energy is an investor owned utility that provides natural gas and electricity to 6.7 million of Michigan's 10 million residents. It serves customers in all 68 of the state's Lower Peninsula counties. It is the primary subsidiary of CMS Energy. The company was founded in 1886 and is currently headquartered in Jackson, Michigan.
The Lansing Board of Water & Light is a publicly owned, municipal utility that provides electricity and water to the residents of the cities of Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan, and the surrounding townships of Delta, Delhi, Meridian and DeWitt. The Lansing Board of Water & Light also provides steam and chilled water services within the City of Lansing. It is the largest public utility in Michigan.
San Diego Gas & Electric is a regulated public utility that provides natural gas and electricity to San Diego County and southern Orange County in southwestern California, United States. It is owned by Sempra, a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Diego.
PECO, formerly the Philadelphia Electric Company, is an energy company founded in 1881 and incorporated in 1929. It became part of Exelon Corporation in 2000 when it merged with Commonwealth Edison's holding company Unicom Corp.
Solar power in Michigan has been growing in recent years due to new technological improvements, falling solar prices and a variety of regulatory actions and financial incentives. The largest solar farm in Michigan is Assembly Solar, completed in 2022, which has 347 MW of capacity. Small-scale solar provided 50% of Michigan solar electricity as recently as 2020 but multiple solar farms in the 100 MW to 200 MW range are proposed to be completed by the middle of the decade. Although among the lowest U.S. states for solar irradiance, Michigan mostly lies farther south than Germany where solar power is heavily deployed. Michigan is expected to use 120 TWh per year in 2030. To reach a 100% solar electrical grid would require 2.4% of Michigan's land area to host 108 GW of installed capacity.
The Sherburne County Generating Station, also known as Sherco, is a large coal-fired power plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Becker, Minnesota, which is in Sherburne County. Its three units have a combined capacity of 2,238 megawatts, making it the largest power plant in the state. In comparison, the single-unit Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant located less than four miles away has an output of 671 MW. The state's other nuclear power plant, the 2-unit Prairie Island facility, is rated at 1,096 MW, so Sherco has a larger peak output than those plants put together. The station uses 20,000 to 30,000 tons of coal per day. The BNSF Railway delivers up to three 115-car trains per day from mines in the Powder River Basin.
The United States state of Arkansas is a significant producer of natural gas and a minor producer of petroleum.
The Grande Prairie Wind Farm is a 400 megawatt (MW) wind farm spanning northeastern Holt County in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It increased wind generating capacity in the state by 50% to become the largest such facility upon its completion in late 2016. It is owned and operated by Berkshire Hathaway Energy and the power is being sold to the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA).