With iconic sign along the Arkansas River, Tulsa’s landmark power plant turns 100

The city needed electricity. And the generators needed Lipich, the operations supervisor at Tulsa’s oldest power plant.

PSO sent a four-wheel drive vehicle to bring him to work through knee-deep snow.

“We’re staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no exceptions,” Lipich says, standing in front of a bewildering array of dials, buttons and levers in the plant’s control room, where photographs aren’t allowed. “You don’t get to say, ‘Sorry, can’t make it.’”

One of the city’s most recognizable landmarks, the Tulsa Power Station turned 100 this year, as vital now as it was the day the generators first started spinning.

No one actually knows the exact date when the plant began operating, but the Public Service Company of Oklahoma will mark the occasion Wednesday with Mayor G.T. Bynum and other dignitaries visiting the site.

The Oklahoma Power Co. began construction in 1920 on the west bank of the Arkansas River more than 2 miles south of downtown, which put the plant on the outskirts of Tulsa at the time.

PSO bought the facility in 1927 and added a gigantic lighted sign facing the river and spelling out the company’s name.

It has been one of the most-photographed locations in Tulsa ever since, but the sign there today is not the original. PSO replaced it in 1955 and converted the incandescent light bulbs to LEDs in 2010.

The sign measures 336 feet across and 40 feet high with each letter weighing 800 pounds.

“Tulsa Power Station lights up at night, a bold emblem of PSO’s service to the community,” said Leigh Anne Strahler, the company’s president and chief operating officer.

PSO kept 90,000 tons of coal piled up in a yard north of the plant until the late 1940s, when the company converted the facility to natural gas.

As the company shifts toward renewable energy sources, the 100-year-old plant plays the vital role of maintaining voltage levels in the Tulsa area during peak demand, which means it isn’t always generating power but must always remain ready at a moment’s notice, officials said.

“More than 100 years after opening,” Strahler said, “TPS continues to use Oklahoma resources and Oklahoma workers to deliver power to all our Oklahoma communities.”