The Beatrice Power Station is an intermediate plant, which means it will operate from 2 to 40 percent of the time, giving NPPD the operational flexibility to match power resources to customer load efficiently.

The plant is a brand new resource for NPPD, whose last addition to its power resource fleet was in 1982 with the completion of Gerald Gentleman Station Unit 2.

The BPS is connected to two separate, large-capacity natural gas transportation pipelines that significantly reduce the risk of a shortage of natural gas.

Design of the plant includes two combustion turbines and one steam turbine. The combustion turbines are rated at 80 megawatts each and the steam turbine at 90 megawatts. Thus, the power station is 250 megawatts, nominal. The output tends to decrease at higher ambient temperatures, so approximately 229 megawatts is expected for summer operation of the plant.

Benefits of building a natural gas fired combined-cycle plant include:

• lower capital costs for NPPD. The cost per kilowatt to build a combined-cycle, gas-fired plant is approximately half the cost per kilowatt to build a coal-fired plant.
• a potential source of additional revenue for the District by having the resources to sell into the market after NPPD’s own customers’ load has been served.
• a shorter period required to permit and construct which reduces the exposure to financial risk (i.e. when building a coal-fired plant);
• the ability to incrementally add to the site, if required;
• lower environmental emissions are associated with a gas-fired resource;
• lower heat rate which makes it more efficient than NPPD’s existing gas-fired plants; and
• the combination of the BPS, Canaday Station and NPPD’s other peaking units will support NPPD's irrigation load that runs approximately 50-60 days out of the year.
• a reduction to NPPD's “Value-at-risk.” It is estimated that the BPS could save from $20 - $30 million per year (the cost when an existing generation unit is lost unexpectedly).