1700s | 1800s | 1900s | 2000s1700s1752Ben Franklin (United States) tied a key to a kite string during a thunderstorm, and proved that static electricity and lightning were the same thing. 1800s 1800
1900s1901-1932Growing economies of scale hastened growth and consolidation in the electric utility industry. Strong Federal involvement in the electricity industry was, based on three factors: first, the electric power industry became recognized as a natural monopoly in interstate commerce (producing a product most efficiently provided by one supplier) subject to Federal regulation; second, the Federal Government owned most of the Nation's hydroelectric resources; and third, Federal economic development programs accelerated, including electricity generation. 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which was designed to break up powerful holding companies that had bought up many smaller electric companies. 1936 Hoover Dam began operating on the Colorado River. The hydropower plant produced up to 130,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity enough to power 176 households if running at full capacity. Today the dam generates approximately 4 billion kWh or enough to power 1.3 million households. (See image of Boulder Dam) The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 was aimed at bringing electricity to farms across the country. 1950 Owing to rural electrification, almost all of American farms had electricity, compared with 11 percent in 1932 and 50 percent in 1942. 1959 In 1959 Boston Edison became the first utility company in New England to install a Univac II mainframe computer. 1973 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo caused the prices of oil to rise sharply. High oil prices increased interest in other energy sources, such as wind energy. U.S. utilities ordered the construction of 41 nuclear power plants, a one-year record. 1974-1982 NASA developed 13 experimental wind turbines with four major designs in a joint research effort with the Department of Energy and The National Science Foundation. 1978 Legislation for the deregulation of the electricity industry begins. 1979 The cost of electricity from wind generation was about 40 cents per kilowatt hour (dropping to 5 cents per kWh in 2009 with state of the art turbines.) 1980 The Carlisle house (Massachusetts) was completed with participation from MIT, DOE, and Solar Design Associates. This state of the art building was the first to integrate a photovoltaic system, and passive solar heating and. 1984 Nuclear power replaced hydropower as the second-largest source of electricity in the United States, after coal. 1986 The world's worst nuclear power accident happened at the Chernobyl plant in the former USSR (now Ukraine). 1989 Nuclear power plants provided 19% of the electricity used in the United States; 46 units entered service during the 1980s. 1990 More than 2,200 megawatts of wind energy capacity was installed in California - more than half of the world's capacity at the time. U.S. 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment and the U.S. 1992 Energy Policy Act reactivated interest electric car development. 1992 The University of South Florida fabricated a 15.89% efficient thin-film cell, breaking the 15% barrier for the first time. 1999 Worldwide, installed photovoltaic capacity reached 1,000 megawatts (1 million kWh) enough to power 500 households at 2,000 kWh world average. Back to the top 2000s2006The United States ranked among the Top 4 countries in the world for hydroelectric generation, along with China, Canada, and Brazil. These countries combined generated 44% of the world's electricity from hydropower. Coal production set a record high with 1.16 billion tons. Wyoming continued to dominate coal production in the United States. 2007 Wind power provided 5 percent of the renewable energy used in the United States. U.S. wind power produced enough electricity, on average, to power the equivalent of over 2.5 million homes. Installed capacity of wind-powered, electricity-generating equipment was 13,885 megawatts as of September 30 - more than four times the capacity in 2000. Boeing Spectrolab and the NREL created the High-Efficiency Metamorphic Multijunction Concentrator Solar Cell, or HEMM solar cell, which achieved the highest efficiency level of any photovoltaic device to date, breaking the 40% conversion efficiency barrier, thus twice as efficient as a typical silicon cell. Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, American Wind Energy Association, World Bank |
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