Omaha Public Power District is undertaking one of the most comprehensive digital transformation and grid modernization initiatives in the industry. OPPD’s current technology, systems, and tools lack capability and cannot support OPPD’s plans to integrate distributed resources, accommodate load growth and the electrification of transportation, and improve outage management through enhanced situational awareness. To address these challenges, OPPD is embarking on building a next-generation grid.

The first phase of the program includes the deployment of ~390,000 AMI 2.0 meters across OPPD’s service territory. OPPD will deploy a 10,000-meter soft launch in 2025 with full deployment of meters in the subsequent years. Also as part of the first phase of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) program, OPPD will go live with a full ecosystem of technologies in support of AMI and business operations in 2025. This includes a new field area network, AMI head-end system, meter data management system, geographic information system, outage management system, field service management, enterprise asset management for distribution, updates and integrations with our customer information system, modernization of our middleware platform, deploying cloud technologies, and a new customer platform to engage our customer-owners and provide them with granular usage date and enhance self-service and outage notification capabilities.

Future phases of modernization include an advanced distribution management system (ADMS), an operational distributed energy resource management system, additional DERMS platform(s) for device and customer aggregation, reclosers, and an ADMS-controlled FLISR scheme, volt-var optimization managed centrally by ADMS through remote control of load tap changers (LTC), and line capacitors accounting for the proliferation of DERS, EVs, and other behind-the-meter technologies, grid monitoring devices and the development of new rates, products and services.

The initiative will improve power quality and resilience; speed up outage restoration and provide self-healing capabilities; offer edge computing power, high-resolution waveform data, and dynamic energy data to allow customers/owners to analyze their device-level usage, enabling demand response programs; enable DERs including rooftop solar, behind the meter battery storage, and EVs; and facilitate engagement with customer/owners through near real-time updates and information.

The size of this effort cannot be understated.