Orlando Utilities Commission

The Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC: "The Reliable One") is a municipally-owned public utility providing water and electric service to the citizens of Orlando, Florida and portions of adjacent unincorporated areas of Orange County, as well as St. Cloud, Florida, in Osceola County. Based on 2020 data, utility was awarded for having the least amount of power outages and the shortest elapsed outage times for a major provider in the state of Florida.[1]

Orlando Utilities Commission logo

A Ford F-350 Super Duty from Pike Electric Corporation, a contractor for the OUC.

Established in 1923 by a special act of the Florida Legislature,[2] OUC is the second largest municipal utility in Florida and 14th largest municipal in the country. OUC provides electric, water, chilled water and/or lighting services to more than 240,000 customers.[3] Their most recently reported electricity customer count totaled 253,449 customers, with 221,756 being residential accounts and 31,693 being commercial accounts.[4]

OUC owns and operates the Curtis H. Stanton Energy Center in east Orange County. The most diverse generating site in the state – natural gas, landfill methane gas, coal and solar are on the 3,280 acre property which can generate more than 1,800 megawatts of electricity. OUC also owns the Indian River Plant near Cocoa, a 40 percent ownership of Lakeland Electric’s McIntosh Unit 3 in Lakeland, and a 6 percent stake of the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant near Ft. Pierce. The company is governed by a five-member commission (including the Mayor of Orlando), which is responsible for all operating policies.

OUC also owns and operates seven water plants and a distribution network of more than 1,700 miles of pipe. OUC's water is pumped from the Lower Floridan Aquifer and treated with ozone to reduce the need for other chemicals.