LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — SPP celebrated its 75th anniversary this week with a gala featuring political and regulatory figures, an orchestral piece, a commemorative video and a coffee-table book.

The gala, held Monday night in downtown Little Rock, attracted more than 300 attendees, including Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and other state officials, FERC Commissioner Colette Honorable — former chair of the state Public Service Commission — board members, stakeholders and community leaders.

They were treated to the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet’s rendition of “Heralding Light,” which was composed for the occasion.

SPP also marked the occasion by releasing a 20-minute video and a history book, both called “The Power of Relationships.” The book spent a year in development, with former SPP executive Les Dillahunty providing much of the preliminary work, and features comments from previous and current members and officers.

“SPP has long distinguished itself through our relationship-based approach to doing business,” SPP CEO Nick Brown and Board Chair Jim Eckelberger wrote in the book’s foreword. “SPP exists because of its shareholders. Period. Without their support — logistically, financially, politically and often even emotionally — we would not be where we are today, if we were anywhere at all.”

SPP was created by 11 regional power companies just nine days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to ensure reliable energy for an aluminum plant supporting the wartime effort. The RTO now serves 18 million people across 14 states.

Ten things you may not have known about SPP (from “The Power of Relationships”):

1. SPP’s first computer had two memory cards “the size of a pizza box,” each with less than a megabyte of memory. “My iPhone now has more power in it,” says Malinda See, vice president of corporate services. One of SPP’s 14 original employees, See said she would take the reel-to-reel backup tapes home for safekeeping.
2. SPP’s operating budget, less than $53,000 in 1969, didn’t exceed $1 million until 1990. It’s currently $210 million.
3. Back when the fledgling organization had 14 employees, it nonetheless kept a strict accounting of the few fixed assets it had. “If they had to buy a chair,” CFO Tom Dunn recalls, “they had utility members ask, ‘Why do you need more chairs? What happened to the old chair?’”

4. 

   SPP’s original 11 members were future Entergy operating companies Arkansas Power and Light, Louisiana Power and Light and Mississippi Power and Light; future American Electric Power subsidiaries Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) and Southwestern Gas and Electric (now Southwestern Electric Power Co.); Southwestern Light and Power (later acquired by PSO); Empire District Electric; Kansas Gas and Electric (now Westar Energy); Nebraska Power (Nebraska Public Power District); Oklahoma Gas & Electric; and Texas Power and Light (Luminant, Oncor and TXU Energy).

5. Dillahunty and Jay Caspary, now director of research, development and Tariff studies, were recognized by the Kansas House of Representatives as honorary citizens in 2006 for the amount of time they had spent in the Sunflower State working on transmission-expansion development.
6. Board Chair Jim Eckelberger, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, and Director Harry Skilton have been with SPP since before it gained RTO status in 2003. They were both part of an independent board seated in 2000 as a precursor to RTO status.
7. It took three attempts and three years before SPP was approved by FERC as an RTO. In the interim, SPP also tried to merge twice with MISO, calling the effort off for good in March 2003.
8. Former CEO John Marschewski once accidentally locked himself out of SPP’s offices in the days before identification badges. Marschewski waited for another tenant to let him in the building, then removed drop ceiling tiles and climbed over the wall to get into his office from the hallway.
9. CFO Tom Dunn dressed as Superman for a company-wide function several years ago. Unfortunately, his superpowers failed him when he tried to fly off the stage. He broke one foot and bruised the other upon landing.
10. The largest outage in SPP’s history came in July 1993 when sagging power lines tripped after coming into contact with trees and resulted in the loss or reduction of more than 300 MW of load. The interruption was centered on the four-state border area of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

– Tom Kleckner