The Orca power plant is located on the north end of Cordova across the street from the Alaska Marine Highway System's ferry dock. It was built in 1984 and has been a primary source of power for Cordova since then.

The plant contains four diesel engine driven generators, two larger "main" units and two smaller "peaker" units. The total load capacity of this plant is a little over 7.1 megawatts (MW).

The two smaller units are Caterpillar model 3516s which are 1200 RPM turbocharged 16 cylinder V-configuration engines, turning Kato Engineering 1200 RPM 3 phase 480 volt generators with a load capacity of a little over 1.1 MW each.

One of the large units is an Electro-Motive Division, (GM) model 645 E4 which is a 3,600 horsepower 900 rotations per minute (RPM), turbocharged 20 cylinder four stroke V-configuration engine, turning a 900 RPM 3 phase 2400 / 4160 volt generator with a load capacity of 2.5 MW. These engines are also commonly seen in railroad locomotives.

The second large unit is a Fairbanks Morse model 38 TD 8 1/8 which is an opposed piston 3,360 horsepower 720 RPM blown and turbocharged inline 12 cylinder engine turning a Louis Allis 720 RPM 3 phase 12,470 volt generator with a load capacity of 2.4 MW.
These engines are of an interesting design in that there are no cylinder heads, but instead have an upper and lower crankshaft and two pistons per cylinder that compress the air/fuel mixture in the middle of the cylinder from above and below. They were originally designed for use as submarine propulsion units because of their ability to produce large amounts of horsepower in a relatively limited space.

The Orca power plant is also the central control point of Cordova Electric Cooperative's (CEC) entire generation and distribution system. All diesel and hydro operations at all three power plants are monitored, controlled and run from one computer station through a state of the art Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) automation system that also monitors and controls CEC's substation located approximately two miles east of the Orca plant. With this SCADA system operators can manually control all generation units, distribution feeders and dam operations as well as monitor the status of all critical dam, unit and feeder details from one central location.

With a sophisticated feature called "Demand Control" engaged, the SCADA system is, in effect, in an "auto pilot" state that will make all decisions and necessary adjustments to the electric utility system to maintain a steady, clean and reliable supply of power for the city of Cordova and the surrounding area.

The main focu s of Demand Control is to provide the most efficient use of the available hydroelectric power, keeping the use of diesel units to an absolute minimum.