Hydroelectric Power

Hydroelectric Power. Electricity generated through the use of waterwheels or hydraulic turbines is known as hydroelectric power. In the early 1880s, small water‐powered mills were utilized to produce direct current (DC) electricity. However, the full potential of hydroelectric power was not realized until the proliferation of alternating current (AC) power systems in the 1890s. In contrast to direct current (which was difficult to transmit more than ten miles), polyphase AC systems proved capable of transmitting power hundreds of miles. As a result, AC systems allowed the development of large waterpower sites in remote locations far removed from urban markets.

America's first polyphase AC hydroelectric power system came on‐line in 1893 near San Bernardino, California. California subsequently led the nation in long‐distance hydroelectric power development; Fresno received power over a thirty‐five‐mile‐long transmission line in 1896, and by 1901 San Francisco was connected to generating plants in the Sierra Nevada mountains, more than 140 miles away. In the eastern United States, Niagara Falls became the focus of hydroelectric power development; in 1896, AC power was first transmitted over a 22‐mile‐long line connecting Niagara Falls to Buffalo, New York.

In the early twentieth century, the conservationist Gifford Pinchot championed a movement advocating government regulation of hydroelectric power systems built by privately owned utilities. In the 1920s, the struggle between public and private interests over control of the electric power industry focused on the Muscle Shoals (or Wilson) Dam on the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. The government had started the Muscle Shoals project during World War I to manufacture nitrates used in explosives. After the war, Henry Ford proposed buying the dam for general industrial purposes. However, public‐power supporters in Congress blocked the transfer of control into private hands. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt successfully incorporated Wilson Dam—and several other proposed dams—into the newly created and publicly administered Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

In the West, hydroelectric power constituted a key component of the Boulder Canyon Project. Authorized in 1928 by President Calvin Coolidge, this project included federal financing of the Hoover Dam across the Colorado River near Las Vegas, Nevada. During Roosevelt's New Deal, many other large‐scale hydroelectric power dams were built in the West by the federal government. These included Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, Shasta Dam in California, and Marshall Ford Dam in Texas.

After World War II, still more hydropower dams were built (including Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona), but the economic importance of hydroelectricity waned as fossil‐fuel and nuclear generating plants grew in size and numbers. By the end of the twentieth century, hydroelectric power accounted for about 10 percent of electricity used in the United States; concurrently, public concern over environmental costs associated with reservoir construction prompted a movement to remove hydroelectric dams in order to restore river valleys to a more natural state.
See also Dams and Hydraulic Engineering; Electricity and Electrification; Environmentalism; New Deal Era, The; Nuclear Power.

Bibliography

Preston J. Hubbard , Origins of the TVA: The Muscle Shoals Controversy, 1920–1932, 1961.
Thomas P. Hughes , Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930, 1983.

Donald C. Jackson