powermag.com
History of Power: The Evolution of the
Electric Generation Industry
10/01/2017 | Abby Harvey, Aaron Larson, and Sonal Patel
19-25 minutes
POWER magazine was launched in 1882, just as the world was
beginning to grasp the implications of a new, versatile form of
energy: electricity. During its 135-year history, the magazine’s
pages have reflected the fast-changing evolution of the
technologies and markets that characterize the world’s power
sector. These are some of the events that have shaped both
the history of power and the history of POWER.
The history of power generation is long and convoluted, marked by
myriad technological milestones, conceptual and technical, from
hundreds of contributors. Many accounts begin power’s story at the
demonstration of electric conduction by Englishman Stephen Gray,
which led to the 1740 invention of glass friction generators in
Leyden, Germany. That development is said to have inspired
Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiments, as well as the invention of
the battery by Italy’s Alessandro Volta in 1800, Humphry Davy’s first
effective “arc lamp” in 1808, and in 1820, Hans Christian Oersted’s
demonstration of the relationship between electricity and
magnetism. In 1820, in arguably the most pivotal contribution to
modern power systems, Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry
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invented a primitive electric motor, and in 1831, documented that
an electric current can be produced in a wire moving near a magnet
—demonstrating the principle of the generator.
Invention of the first rudimentary dynamo is credited to Frenchman
Hippolyte Pixii in 1832. Antonio Pacinotti improved it to provide
continuous direct current power by 1860. In 1867, Werner von
Siemens, Charles Wheatstone, and S.A. Varley nearly
simultaneously devised the “self-exciting dynamo-electric
generator.” Perhaps the most important improvement then arrived
in 1870, when a Belgian inventor, Zenobe Gramme, devised a
dynamo that produced a steady direct current well-suited to
powering motors—a discovery that generated a burst of
enthusiasm about electricity’s potential to light and power the world.
By 1877—as the streets of many cities across the world were being
lit up by arc lighting (but not ordinary rooms because arc lights were
still blindingly bright)—Ohio-based Charles F. Brush had developed
and begun selling the most reliable dynamo design to that point,
and a host of forward thinkers were actively exploring the promise
of large-scale electricity distribution. Eventually, Thomas Edison
invented a less powerful incandescent lamp in 1879, and in
September 1882—only a month before the inaugural issue of
POWER magazine was published—he established a central
generating station at Pearl Street (Figure 1) in lower Manhattan.
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1. Pearl Street Station. Thomas Edison in September 1882
achieved his vision of a full-scale central power station with a
system of conductors to distribute electricity to end-users in the
high-profile business district in New York City. Source: U.S.
Department of Energy
A History Rooted in Coal
Advances in alternating current (AC) technology opened up new
realms for power generation. Hydropower, for example, marked
several milestones between 1890 and 1900 in Oregon, Colorado,
Croatia (where the first complete multiphase AC system was
demonstrated in 1895), at Niagara Falls, and in Japan.
By then, however, coal power generation’s place in power’s history
had already been firmly established. The first coal-fired steam
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generators provided low-pressure saturated or slightly superheated
steam for steam engines driving direct current (DC) dynamos. Sir
Charles Parsons, who built the first steam turbine generator (with a
thermal efficiency of just 1.6%) in 1884, improved its efficiency two
years later by introducing the first condensing turbine, which drove
an AC generator. By the early 1900s, coal-fired power units
featured outputs in the 1 MW to 10 MW range, outfitted with a
steam generator, an economizer, evaporator, and a superheater
section. By the 1910s, the coal-fired power plant cycle was
improved even more by the introduction of turbines with steam
extractions for feedwater heating and steam generators equipped
with air preheaters—all which boosted net efficiency to about 15%.
The demonstration of pulverized coal steam generators at the
Oneida Street Station in Wisconsin in 1919 vastly improved coal
combustion, allowing for bigger boilers (Figure 2). In the 1920s,
another technological boost came with the advent of once-through
boiler applications and reheat steam power plants, along with the
Benson steam generator, which was built in 1927. Reheat steam
turbines became the norm in the 1930s, when unit ratings soared to
a 300-MW output level. Main steam temperatures consistently
increased through the 1940s, and the decade also ushered in the
first attempts to clean flue gas with dust removal. The 1950s and
1960s were characterized by more technical achievements to
improve efficiency—including construction of the first once-through
steam generator with a supercritical main steam pressure.
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2. Purely pulverized. The 40-MW Lakeside Power Plant in St.
Francis, Wisconsin, began operations in 1921. This image
shows the steam turbines and generators at Lakeside, which
was the world’s first plant to burn pulverized coal exclusively.
Courtesy: WEC Energy Group
Unit ratings of 1,300 MW were reached by the 1970s. In 1972, the
world’s first integrated coal gasification combined cycle power
plant—a 183-MW power plant for the German generator STEAG—
began operations. Mounting environmental concerns and the
subsequent passage of the Clean Air Act by the Nixon
administration in the 1970s, however, also spurred technical
solutions such as scrubbers to mitigate sulfur dioxide emissions.
The decade ended with completion of a pioneering commercial
fluidized bed combustion plant built on the Georgetown University
campus in Washington, D.C., in 1979.
The early 1980s, meanwhile, were marked by the further
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development of emissions control technologies, including the
introduction of selective catalytic reduction systems as a secondary
measure to mitigate nitrogen oxide emissions. Component
performance also saw vast improvements during that period to the
21st century. Among the most recent major milestones in coal
power’s history is completion of the first large-scale coal-fired
power unit outfitted with carbon capture and storage technology in
2014 at Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan.
Gas Power Takes Off
Coal power technology’s evolution was swift, owing to soaring
power demand and a burgeoning mining sector. The natural gas
power sector, which today takes the lion’s share of both U.S.
installed capacity and generation, was slower to take off. In 1896,
about a decade after Charles Parsons developed his steam turbine
generator, American inventor Charles Curtis offered an invention of
a different turbine to the General Electric Co. (GE). By 1901, GE
had successfully developed a 500-kW Curtis turbine generator,
which employed high-pressure steam to drive rapid rotation of a
shaft-mounted disk, and by 1903, it delivered the world’s first 5-MW
steam turbine to the Commonwealth Edison Co. of Chicago.
Subsequent models, which received improvement boosts
suggested by GE’s Dr. Sanford Moss, were used mostly as
mechanical drives or as peaking units.
Innovations in aircraft technology, and engineering and
manufacturing advancements during both World Wars propelled
gas power technology to new heights, however. At GE, for
example, engineers who participated in development of jet engines
put their know-how into designing a gas turbine for industrial and
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utility service. Following development of a gas turbine-electric
locomotive in 1948, GE installed its first commercial gas turbine for
power generation—a 3.5-MW heavy-duty unit—at the Belle Isle
Station owned by Oklahoma Gas & Electric in July 1949 (Figure 3).
Some experts point out that because that unit used exhaust heat
for feedwater heating of a steam turbine unit, it was essentially also
the world’s first combined cycle power plant. That same year,
Westinghouse put online a 1.3-MW unit at the River Fuel Corp. in
Mississippi.
3. Trailblazer. In 1949, General Electric installed the first gas
turbine built in the U.S. for the purpose of generating power at
the Belle Isle Station, a 3.5-MW unit, owned by Oklahoma Gas &
Electric. Courtesy: GE
Large heavy duty gas turbine technology rapidly improved
thereafter. In the early 1950s, firing temperatures were 1,300F
(705C); by the late 1950s, they had soared to 1,500F, and
eventually reached 2,000F in 1975. By 1957, a general surge in
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gas turbine unit sizes led to the installment of the first heat recovery
steam generator (HRSG) for a gas turbine. By 1965, the first fully
fired boiler combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant came
online, and by 1968, the first CCGT was outfitted with a HRSG. The
late 1960s, meanwhile, were characterized by gas turbine suppliers
starting to develop pre-designed or standard CCGT plants. GE
developed the STAG (steam and gas) system, for example,
Westinghouse, the PACE (Power at combined efficiency) system,
and Siemens, the GUD (gas and steam) system.
More recent gas turbine milestones came in 1990, with the
introduction of the first advanced gas turbines, and installment of
the first CCGT paired with a fuel cell in 2000.
Atomic Discoveries
Although the concept of the atom was fairly well developed,
scientists had not yet figured out how to harness the energy
contained in atoms when the first issue of POWER magazine was
published. But 13 years later, in 1895, the accidental discovery of
X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen started a wave of experimentation in
the atomic field.
In the years that followed, radiation was discovered by Antoine
Henri Becquerel, a French physicist; the Curies—Marie and Pierre
—conducted additional radiation research and coined the term
“radioactivity”; and Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand-born British
physicist, who many people consider the father of nuclear science,
postulated the structure of the atom, proposed the laws of
radioactive decay, and conducted groundbreaking research into the
transmutation of elements.
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Many other scientists were helping advance the world’s
understanding of atomic principles. Albert Einstein developed his
theory of special relativity, E = mc2, where E is energy, m is mass,
and c is the speed of light, in 1905. Niels Bohr published his model
of the atom in 1913, which was later perfected by James Chadwick
when he discovered the neutron.
Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist, in 1934 showed that neutrons
could split atoms. Two German scientists—Otto Hahn and Fritz
Strassman—expanded on that knowledge in 1938 when they
discovered fission, and using Einstein’s theory, the team showed
that the lost mass turned to energy.
Early Nuclear Reactors
Scientists then turned their attention to developing a self-sustaining
chain reaction. To do so, a “critical mass” of uranium needed to be
placed under the right conditions. Fermi, who emigrated to the U.S.
in 1938 to escape fascist Italy’s racial laws, led a group of scientists
at the University of Chicago in constructing the world’s first nuclear
reactor.
The team’s design consisted of uranium placed in a stack of
graphite to make a cube-like frame of fissionable material. The pile,
known as Chicago Pile-1, was erected on the floor of a squash
court beneath the University of Chicago’s athletic stadium (Figure
4). On December 2, 1942, the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction
was demonstrated in Chicago Pile-1.
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4. World’s first nuclear reactor. Chicago Pile-1 was an
exponential pile. At least 29 exponential piles were constructed
in 1942 under the West Stands of the University of Chicago’s
Stagg Field. Source: U.S. Department of Energy
But the U.S. was a year into World War II at the time, and most of
the atomic research being done then was focused on developing
weapons technology. It was not until after the war that the U.S.
government began encouraging the development of nuclear energy
for peaceful civilian purposes.
The first reactor to produce electricity from nuclear energy was
Experimental Breeder Reactor I, on December 20, 1951, in Idaho.
The Soviet Union had a burgeoning nuclear power program at the
time too. Its scientists modified an existing graphite-moderated
channel-type plutonium production reactor for heat and electricity
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generation. In June 1954, that unit, located in Obninsk, began
generating electricity. A few years later, on December 18, 1957, the
first commercial U.S. nuclear power plant—Shippingport Atomic
Power Station, a light-water reactor with a 60-MW capacity—was
synchronized to the power grid in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. and Soviet Union weren’t the only countries building
nuclear plants, however. The UK, Germany, Japan, France, and
several others were jumping on the bandwagon too. The industry
grew rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s. Nuclear construction
projects were on drawing boards across the U.S., with 41 new units
ordered in 1973 alone. But slower electricity demand growth,
construction delays, cost overruns, and complicated regulatory
requirements, put an end to the heyday in the mid-1970s. Nearly
half of all planned U.S. projects ended up being canceled.
Nonetheless, by 1991 the U.S. had twice as many operating
commercial reactors—112 units—as any other country in the world.
Nuclear power’s history is tainted by three major accidents. The
first was the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island Unit 2 on March
28, 1979. A combination of equipment malfunctions, design-related
problems, and worker errors led to the meltdown. The second
major accident occurred on April 26, 1986. That event was
triggered by a sudden surge of power during a reactor systems test
on Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, in the
former Soviet Union. The accident and a subsequent fire released
massive amounts of radioactive material into the environment. The
most-recent major accident occurred following a 9.0-magnitude
earthquake off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011. The quake
caused the Fukushima Daiichi station to lose all off-site power.
Backup systems worked, but 40 minutes after the quake, a 14History
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meter-high tsunami struck the area, knocking some of them out.
Three reactors eventually overheated—melting their cores to some
degree—then hydrogen explosions spread radioactive
contamination throughout the area.
The consequences of accidents have played a role in decisions to
phase out or cut back reliance on nuclear power in some countries.
Nonetheless, China, Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates, the
U.S., and others continue to build new units. Advanced reactor
technology and small modular reactors also offer hope for
revitalizing the industry.
Renewables: The World’s Oldest and Newest Energy
Sources
While humans have been harnessing energy from the sun, wind,
and water for thousands of years, technology has changed
significantly over the course of history, and these ancient energy
types have developed into state-of-the-art innovative power
generation sources.
Chasing Water. What became modern renewable energy
generation got its start in the late 1800s, around the time that
POWER launched. Hydropower was first to transition to a
commercial electricity generation source, and it advanced very
quickly. In 1880, Michigan’s Grand Rapids Electric Light and Power
Co. generated DC electricity using hydropower at the Wolverine
Chair Co. A belt-driven dynamo powered by a water turbine at the
factory lit 16 arc street lamps.
Just two years later, the world’s first central DC hydroelectric station
powered a paper mill in Appleton, Wisconsin. By 1886, there were
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40 to 50 hydroelectric plants operating in the U.S. and Canada
alone, and by 1888, roughly 200 electric companies relied on
hydropower for at least some of their electricity generation. In 1889,
the nation’s first AC hydroelectric plant came online, the Willamette
Falls Station in Oregon City, Oregon.
Internationally, Switzerland was at the forefront of pumped storage,
opening the world’s first such plant in 1909. Pumped storage wasn’t
integrated into the U.S. energy mix until 1930 when Connecticut
Electric Light and Power Co. erected a pumped storage plant in
New Milford, Connecticut.
Blowing in the Wind. At about the same time that hydropower was
gaining popularity, inventors were also figuring out how to use the
windmills of the past to generate electricity for the future. In 1888,
Charles Brush, an inventor in Ohio, constructed a 60-foot wind
turbine in his backyard (Figure 5). The windmill’s wheel was 56 feet
in diameter and had 144 blades. A shaft inside the tower turned
pulleys and belts, which spun a 12-kW dynamo that was connected
to batteries in Brush’s basement.
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5. Birth of the wind turbine. In 1888, Charles Brush, an
inventor in Ohio, constructed a 60-foot wind turbine capable of
generating electricity in his backyard. Source: Wikimedia
Commons
Wind-powered turbines slowly and with little fanfare spread
throughout the world. The American Midwest, where the turbines
were used to power irrigation pumps, saw numerous installations.
In 1941, the world saw the first 1.25-MW turbine connected to the
grid on a hill in Castleton, Vermont, called Grandpa’s Knob.
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Interest in wind power was renewed by the oil crisis of the 1970s,
which spurred research and development. Wind power in the U.S.
got a policy boost when President Jimmy Carter signed the Public
Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, which required companies to
buy a certain amount of electricity from renewable energy sources,
including wind.
By the 1980s, the first utility-scale wind farms began popping up in
California. Europe has been the leader in offshore wind, with the
first offshore wind farm installed in 1991 in Denmark. According to
Wind Europe, Europe currently has 12.6 GW of capacity from 3,589
grid-connected wind turbines in 10 countries. In late 2016, the first
offshore wind farm in the U.S. began operation in the waters off
Block Island, Rhode Island.
Let the Sunshine In. Compared to other commercially available
renewable energy sources, solar power is in its infancy, though the
path that led to its commercial use began almost 200 years ago.
In 1839, French scientist Edmond Becquerel discovered the
photovoltaic (PV) effect by experimenting with an electrolytic cell
made of two metal electrodes in a conducting solution. Becquerel
found that electricity generation increased when it was exposed to
light. More than three decades later, an English electrical engineer
named Willoughby Smith discovered the photoconductivity of
selenium. By 1882 the first solar cell was created by New York
inventor Charles Fritts, who coated selenium with a layer of gold to
develop a cell with an energy conversion rate of just 1–2%.
It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that silicon solar cells were
produced commercially. Physicists at Bell Laboratories determined
silicon to be more efficient than selenium. The cell created by Bell
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Labs was “the first solar cell capable of converting enough of the
sun’s energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment,”
according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
By the 1970s, the efficiency of solar cells had increased, and they
began to be used to power navigation warning lights and horns on
many offshore gas and oil rigs, lighthouses, and railroad crossing
signals. Domestic solar applications began to be viewed as
sensible alternatives in remote locations where grid-connected
options were not affordable.
The 1980s saw significant progress in the development of moreefficient,
more-powerful solar projects. In 1982, the first PV
megawatt-scale power station, developed by ARCO Solar, came
online in Hesperia, California. Also in 1982, the DOE began
operating Solar One, a 10-MW central-receiver demonstration
project, the first project to prove the feasibility of power tower
technology. Then, in 1992, researchers at the University of South
Florida developed a 15.9%-efficient thin-film PV cell, the first to
break the 15% efficiency barrier. By the mid-2000s, residential solar
power systems were available for sale in home improvement
stores.
In 2016, solar power accounted for just 0.9% of U.S. electricity
generation at utility-scale facilities. However, it is gaining steam.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, “[t]he U.S.
solar market had its biggest year ever in 2016, nearly doubling its
previous record and adding more electric generating capacity than
any other source of energy for the first time ever.” (For more details
on the history of all power generation types, see supplements
associated with this issue at powermag.com.) ■
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—Abby Harvey is a POWER reporter, Aaron Larson is executive
editor of POWER, and Sonal Patel is a POWER associate editor.
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