This dynamo, connected directly to a high-speed steam engine, was one of six that produced direct current at Thomas A. Edison's electric power station at 257 Pearl Street in New York City. The Pearl Street Station was the prototype for central station power generation. Edison set out in 1878 to provide an electrical distribution system to bring lighting into the home: His first filament lamp lit on October 21, 1879. With the help of Frances Upton and C.L. Clarke, Edison built his engine-driven dynamo for the 1881 Paris Electrical Exposition.
Electric
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Edison jumbo dynamo
Era_date_from:
1882
1980
Operated by the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), now known as Exelon Corp., Eddystone Station Unit #1 is a 325 MW pulverized-coal-fired plant that pushed the technology of steam-electric generating plants. When built in 1960, engineers sought to make a more efficient plant using higher temperatures and pressures and larger machines. Previous experience at Philo 6 (Zanesville, Ohio, 1957) had demonstrated supercritical steam plants would work, so engineers pushed beyond that frontier to even larger machines and efficiencies.
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Eddystone Station
Era_date_from:
1960
2003
Formerly known as the Oneida Street Power Plant, this plant served from 1918 to 1920 as the pilot plant in the United States for the development and use of finely pulverized coal firing in the boilers of steam-electric power plants. The results of the Oneida experiences were major changes in boiler design and lower costs of power generation.
Following the early years of central station electric development, experiments at Onieda Street resolved persisting inefficiencies at a time when coal was increasingly expensive and of poorer quality.
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1980
Wisconsin Historical Society Image Caption: East Wells Onieda Street Power Plant Era_date_from: 1918
Fossil Creek meanders ten miles to the Verde River, dropping some 1,600 feet during its course and, at the turn of the century, enticed miners in the copper-rich Irving area to use a new technology -- hydroelectric power. A seven-mile series of flumes brings the water from a dam below Fossil Spring to the Irving Plant and then to Stehr Lake.
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Original Image: Public Domain (National Park Service)
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Childs-Irving Hydroelectric Project
Era_date_from:
1909
1976
This unit, retired from the Belle Isle Station of the Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company, was the first gas turbine to be used for electric utility power generation in the United States. It represents the transformation of the early aircraft gas turbine, in which the engines seldom ran more than ten hours at a stretch, into a long-life prime mover. This redesign was based upon creep-rupture tests of S-816 cobalt-base alloys for turbine buckets. The low-cost trouble-free service led to wide-scale adoption of the gas turbine, over 45 million kilowatt capacity (over 9 percent of U.S.
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Image Courtesy of ASME
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Belle Isle Gas Turbine on static display in Schenectady, New York
Era_date_from:
1949
1984
The integration of pump and turbine was the first of many to be installed in power-plant systems in the United States. It was the largest and most powerful in the world. As a "pump storage" unit in the Tennessee Valley Authority's system, it effected significant economies in the generation of electrical energy. The unit was designed by engineers of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Allis-Chalmers Company. It was built by Allis-Chalmers.
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Public Domain (Tennessee Valley Authority)
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Hiwassee Dam Unit 2 Reversible Pump-Turbine 1
Era_date_from:
1956
1981
The Connecticut Light & Power Company pioneered the use of pumped storage in the United States at this hydroelectric station. First operated in 1929, the Rocky River Plant had two reversible pumps that somewhat resemble large hydroelectric turbines. This permitted significant improvements in the system efficiency of the company's network of hydroelectric and thermal-electric power generating plants. Water is pumped uphill through a penstock and stored in Lake Candlewood.
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Courtesy ASME
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Rocky River Pumped-storage Hydroelectric Plant
Era_date_from:
1929
1980
This low-head operating plant is representative of nineteenth-century hydropower-plant practice using many small turbines in contrast to twentieth-century use of few large turbines and generators. Its 40,000 horsepower capacity made it the largest in the country using turbines of American design (McCormick-Francis). The contemporary and larger Niagara installation used turbines of French design (Fourneyron). The entrepreneur of this plant was Francis Clergue, a lawyer, who employed as his chief engineer Hans A.E. von Schon, a German immigrant who had served with the U.S.
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Courtesy ASME
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Michigan-Lake Superior Power Hydroelectric Plant
Era_date_from:
1902
1981
This run-of-the-river plant is a typical example of late nineteenth-century small-scale (750 kilowatt) low-head hydroelectric power technology. The Fries Manufacturing and Power Company began operating the Idol's Station on April 18, 1898, making it the first commercial hydroelectric plant in North Carolina involving long-distance power transmission, fourteen-miles distance at 10,000 volts. Idol's was an important power source for transportation, lighting, and industry in the Winston-Salem area.
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Courtesy ASME
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Idols Station, Fries Manufacturing & Power Company
Era_date_from:
1898
1984
This machine, which began operation on December 15, 1891, for the New York Edison Illuminating Company, represents the beginning of large-scale electric power generation in the United States. The generator was designed by chief engineer John Van Vleck, David Joy (known in England for his valve gear), and S. F. Prest.
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Courtesy ASME
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Engine-Driven Dynamo
Era_date_from:
1891
1980
Innovations
