Turtle Creek Station

Aerial view of Turtle Creek Station - Jan. 2024 (facing southeast)

For the latest happenings at the Turtle Creek Station site location, please see the News Feed at the bottom of this page.

OPPD' s Power with Purpose project identified the need for up to 600MW of utility-scale solar and 600MW of balancing natural gas generation to support growing customer demands. The combined solution of utility-scale solar and natural gas continues to support our mission of providing affordable, reliable, environmentally sensitive energy services. While OPPD considers all three parts of our mission equally, new utility-scale solar and balancing natural gas power generation are now must-haves to support continued reliability. Turtle Creek Station is one of this initiative’s balancing natural gas plants.

In 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. With this new plan, OPPD remains committed to its Power with Purpose generation expansion projects, which includes Turtle Creek Station (450 MW), Standing Bear Lake Station (150 MW), and Platteview Solar (81 MW).

Turtle Creek Station will be located near South 168th Street and Fairview Road in Sarpy County. It will include two, simple-cycle combustion turbines and supporting structures for generation, along with a substation for transmission.

Turtle Creek Station will be used to balance the energy load. The plant will run only as needed (estimated at less than 15% of the time) and will be available to support planned (maintenance) and unplanned (storms) outages, as well as be available to support regional power needs as directed by the Southwest Power Pool. Adding natural gas generation will help OPPD meet the growing energy needs of our service territory and support resiliency. That means OPPD can continue providing energy to our customers even in an unpredictable future. Adding natural gas generation will help OPPD meet the growing energy needs of our service territory and will support resiliency. That means OPPD can continue providing energy to our customers even when operations are impacted by a major storm event.

Combustion Turbines

OPPD selected Siemens Energy, Inc. to provide two, SGT6-5000F combustion turbines to power Turtle Creek Station, a simple-cycle turbine facility. The turbine technology converts natural gas into energy to drive a generator, which produces electricity.

Modern natural gas turbines from Siemens Energy, Inc. are designed to also run on light fuel oil, adding fuel source diversity and resiliency. And they are capable of running on a 30% hydrogen/natural gas blend or biodiesel in support of future technology advancements to further decarbonization of OPPD’s generation assets. The turbines offer low emissions that help OPPD meet its targets without the need for additional air pollution control devices. They also have improved operational characteristics, such as fast start-up to supplement renewable energy and meet the changing generation needs of the grid.

Sarpy Southwest Transmission Project

OPPD has completed routing three separate transmission lines in the area that are needed to maintain system resiliency and reliability, as well as to support customer load growth and future power generation. The Sarpy Southwest Transmission Project is now currently under construction. For more information and to see the transmission line routes, please click here.