Generation

Moving Forward

At their monthly board meeting on August 17, 2023, the OPPD Board of Directors voted to approve the utility’s recommended near-term generation resource plan to address unprecedented growth in energy demand. More details about the plan that includes adding up to 2.5 gigawatts of generation capacity to meet this unprecedented demand for electricity in this OPPD news release here.

At the February 2024 board committee meeting, leadership presented the first step toward that new capacity with the announcement of additional thermal generation units to its existing Cass County Station and Sarpy County’s Turtle Creek Station balancing facilities. The utility plans to add three additional natural gas units to the Cass County location and one additional unit to the new Turtle Creek Station, where the original two turbines are scheduled to come online in 2024. Each of the four new units will be capable of generating up to 225 megawatts (MW). For more information, please see this story on OPPD The Wire.

At the May 2024 board committee meeting, OPPD announced a new clean capacity collaboration with Google and NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. The collaboration will allow OPPD to access 600 megawatts (MW) of wind capacity from NextEra Energy Resource’s High Banks Wind Energy Center. The High Banks Wind Energy Center, which is owned and operated by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, has been online since December of 2023 as a part of Google’s long term clean energy portfolio. Google is now supplying this capacity resource to OPPD and will retain the energy and environmental attributes from the project to support its 24/7 carbon-free energy goals. For more information, please see this press release.

At the September 2024 board committee meeting, OPPD announced a power purchase agreement (PPA) with EDF Renewables, effective September 1. Under the deal, OPPD is receiving the full capacity of the Milligan I Wind Project in Saline County, 300 megawatts (MW). That’s enough to power up to 115,000 homes. For more information, please see this story on OPPD The Wire.

New Generation Complements Our Commitment to Power with Purpose

The utility remains committed to previously announced plans for North Omaha Station, including retiring its older units (1-3) which were commissioned in the 1950s and previously converted from coal to natural gas in 2016, as well as converting units 4-5 to natural gas-only fuel. The only change recommended at that site is to potentially add battery storage resources.

First thing: Power with Purpose Construction

Up next: Power with Purpose Becomes Operational

Immediate future: New Resources

Giving Growth Full Power

Here at OPPD, we spend a lot of time talking a lot about growth. Because we want our kids, grandkids and our community, to be as successful as they deserve to be. And growing a thriving tech adopting community takes planning and a LOT of electric power.

If you're familiar with the 13 counties OPPD has the privilege to serve, you may have noticed some exciting changes over the past few years--specifically, significant business and residential growth. In fact, business and residential growth is expanding at a rate we've never seen before, and OPPD is actively planning for our communities' bright futures.

Every day, we work to ensure that our power capabilities are growing with our communities. Some people call what we’re doing future proofing. But we prefer future providing, because the future isn’t something to guard against, it’s something to be excited about.

OPPD expects to add energy load to its system at a rate of 100 megawatts (MW) per year for the next 5-6 years. For context, 100 MW the equivalent of adding about 65 metro-area high schools or mid-size hospitals in one year. To contrast the significance of this growth, just a few years ago OPPD was adding approximately 4 MW per year.

We're proud to take on the challenge of serving our rapidly growing communities with the energy services that help them thrive. Community growth brings economic prosperity, an important piece to cultivating thriving communities, increased tax revenue and job growth and affordable electricity.

The time to plan for this growth is now

The length of planning from a regulatory perspective is getting longer and longer. Knowing that, we must work on our next round of resources for the intermediate term of approximately 2027 - 2032.

OPPD is not alone in our need to keep up with growth, which means there are longer wait times to execute our plans. We see this on the national scale with interconnection wait times, transmission or other pipeline permitting. These challenges are forcing utilities across the country to plan even further ahead to meet their growing resource needs.

Preparing for growth

The need for additional generation is not a surprise. Not only was it identified in our Pathways to Decarbonization study, but resource planning is an integral part of OPPD's operations regardless of the situation. As part of OPPD's on-going capacity planning, we are looking at the capacity needs beyond the Power with Purpose assets into the future through the 2027-2032 approximate timeframe.

The direction we have proposed has been guided after years of customers, employee and public feedback. We have continually gathered this feedback through workshops, surveys and other outreach tools throughout our Power with Purpose, Pathways to Decarbonization and other initiatives.

We updated our analysis with the most recent load and technology data to identify needed resources. Energy + Environmental Economics (E3), who helped us complete Pathways to Decarbonization, is assisting in this planning. All options evaluated are consistent with reliability, near-term timing feasibility and decarbonization goals.

More information around the recommendation was presented to the OPPD Board of Directors at the May Board Committee meeting on May 16, 2023 and the June Board Committee meeting on June 13, 2023. OPPD leadership recommended this solution to serve our growing generation needs beyond Power with Purpose for the approximate timeframe of 2027-2032. Comments regarding the recommendation were accepted through August 8, 2023. This recommendation was approved by a board vote in August 2023.