Staff with the Omaha Public Power District recently shared a post-storm report with the Nebraska public power utility’s Board of Directors that detailed the extensive effort made in response to a storm that knocked out power to more than 221,000 customers.
On the evening of July 31, Omaha Public Power District and its customers experienced an unprecedented storm.
Sustained high winds with hurricane-force gusts caused major damage to several counties within the service territory. More than 221,000 customers, half of its entire customer base, lost power -- some for several hours and others for nearly eight days.
At a recent meeting of the OPPD Board of Directors, the board approved a resolution of appreciation for OPPD employees, forestry crews and mutual aid crews that worked tirelessly to restore power to those impacted.
“We came into this storm well-practiced,” OPPD President and CEO Javier Fernandez said. “It was the sixth storm-related outage event we’ve worked through in just over three months’ time.”
Still, this event was one for the record books. Winds were stronger, lasted longer, and covered a broader densely populated area than any other in OPPD’s history. It covered 1,090 square miles and caused a great deal more damage than the next biggest storm event, which happened July 9, 2021. That storm knocked out power to 188,000 customers.
Utility leaders said when the storm hit, its storm team, made up of employees throughout the utility, mobilized immediately. They put out calls for mutual aid and tree crew support and began coordinating with the cities and counties affected, with Douglas and Sarpy counties the hardest hit.
They also got to work to set up the largest staging area the utility has ever needed for a record number of support crews, in the parking lot of Baxter Arena in Omaha.
Other utilities, including many fellow public power providers from Nebraska, as well as private electrical contractors and tree crews answered the call immediately, making their way to the OPPD service territory by the next morning. Help continued to pour in from as far away as Ohio and Wisconsin. At the peak, OPPD had 175 mutual aid crews and 184 tree crews working 16-hour days alongside OPPD crews to bring power back to customers. The response was unprecedented.
All told, OPPD had a team of 1,500 working on the front lines, including dozens of retired employees who came back to help out-of-town crews with the particulars of the OPPD system.
The utility also had hundreds of employees working behind the scenes. Many coordinated hotel rooms, meals and snacks. Dozens of employees volunteered to do laundry for the crews.
Others ordered supplies needed to replace poles, restring wires and make other repairs. Customer service representatives worked with customers over the phone to provide information, take outage reports and provide progress updates as possible. Among the most critical work done was within OPPD plants, to ensure it had enough power to serve customers’ needs 24-7 during intense summer heat.
“Compared with the 2021 storm, roughly 30% more poles and 40% more fuses were damaged,” said Matt Hardebeck, director of Customer Experience and Operations. “In addition, twice as many transformers and three times as many cross arms were damaged, compared with the storm three years ago.”
Hardebeck noted that the damage could have been even worse if not for the utility’s work to harden the system since that 2021 storm. That work continues, in addition to other ongoing efforts to minimize the impacts of severe weather. OPPD continues to devote more resources to tree-trimming throughout OPPD’s 13-county service territory. With year-round work, the trees along each of OPPD’s circuits are trimmed about every seven years. Fernandez said the utility is aiming to make that every five years.
“We will continue to evaluate what’s working well and where we may be able to improve during these storm events,” Fernandez said.
