The F. E. Phelps Control Center houses the Grand Island Utilities Departments power and water dispatch center as well as engineering and surveying departments of the Utilities Department. The center is named after past Utilities Director Frank E. Phelps.

The Phelps Control Center is manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. Primary electrical circuits that distribute power throughout Grand Island's Service Area is monitored and controlled from this location along with power that is sold to other utilities. In the event of a power outage within the Grand Island Utilities Department service area, customers call the Phelps control center to report the outage. Water customers are encouraged to call the Phelps Control Center after normal daytime working hours if they experience loss of water pressure up to their house or a watermain break.

Electrical energy that is used in your home or business follows a complex system starting with an electric power generating plant or "power plant" located in  Grand Island and another place here in Nebraska. The power plant sends power to high voltage power lines. These lines are controlled with large switches called circuit breakers. The power is then reduced to a lower voltage with large transformers, then passes through more circuit breakers. Before the power is distributed to your home or business, another transformer is used to reduce the voltage down to a usable level. 

The Phelps Control Center coordinates this process from beginning to end and monitors power at various points throughout the power grid via computer. Operation of system circuit breakers are operated by computer from Phelps Control as well. 

Substation supervision and engineering, electrical distribution engineering and design, and water distribution engineering and design for the Grand Island Utilities Department share offices with the dispatching center at the Phelps Control Center.

Cherry Street Substation is located at Bischeld and South Cherry Streets. It is one of 8 Substations located throughout the Utilities Department's service area.

The Grand Island Utilities Department distributes electricity to homes and businesses located within our service area.  The Utilities Department's residential and commercial customers use 700,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year. Here is how it is done.

A boiler contains the furnace where burning fuel (coal, oil or natural gas) heats water to make steam.

A turbine changes steam's heat energy into mechanical energy. Steam pushes blades rotating on a bar, causing it to spin at a high speed.

A generator changes mechanical energy into electrical energy. The spinning bar of the turbine causes a huge magnet in the generator to rotate past copper bars producing electric current.

Transformer stations increase voltage of electrical current so it can travel long distances.

Substation transformers lower voltage so electricity can be delivered to local homes and businesses

The electricity reaches the customer over a system of distribution wires bringing the electricity to the customers meter, where it can then be used within the home.