Electricity 101

Welcome to Electricity 101

The role of electricity in our lives is growing all the time, and consequently, the demand for power is skyrocketing, not just in Nebraska, but across the country and around the world.

Nebraska is the only state in the country served entirely by public power. OPPD and other public power utilities in the state provide electricity as an essential public service. The utilities are not-for-profit, and customers are also their utility’s owners.  

Power companies like OPPD literally keep the lights on, and so much more. Kitchen appliances, heating and cooling systems, televisions, computers, cellphone chargers and more are a routine part of life.  

In fact, electricity is so much a part of our daily lives that it’s generally something we take for granted.  

How it all works

But have you ever wondered how it all works?

In Electricity 101, we’re going to explore the basics of electricity and then expand to a variety of topics. We’re starting with a weekly series of stories and videos that break down the process of how OPPD powers your life.

From the creation of electricity at a generation station to the delivery of it to your home, we’ll walk you through each step, explaining how the various pieces of electrical system infrastructure you see when you’re out and about work together to provide reliable power to your home.

Issues affecting you

And after those introductory videos and stories, we’ll explore other issues that touch your life, like energy efficiency, and how simple choices you make in your home can reduce the amount of power you use and reduce your energy costs.

We’ll also talk about the grid, how power is added to and taken from the grid, and how OPPD works to produce, buy and sell power as efficiently as possible to maintain reliable power and help control costs whenever possible. 

And we’ll talk about power outages, what causes them and how OPPD works to restore power after a major storm or other event causes an outage. 

These stories will take us through the end of the year, and the series will continue after that, with an ongoing goal of making the often complicated and complex world of electricity easier to understand.