POWER May 2022 Intl - 18

UTILITY SPOTLIGHT
Duke Energy's
Century-Old Legacy
Duke Energy, one of the largest energy companies in the world, grew out of a system
of lakes and dams along the Catawba River to generate power for the Piedmont
Carolinas. While the company has sustained a core value of investing in the future
throughout its 118-year history, planning for the energy transition has posed critical
new uncertainties for the corporate giant.
Sonal Patel
T
he half-century from 1880 and 1930
was a remarkable formative period
in the history of power generation
across the U.S. In the South, still predominantly
agricultural and rural in 1900,
development
arrived
rapidly,
delivering
stunning advances for the povertycrushed
region. The most enduring of
those efforts came from two wealthy entrepreneurs
from North Carolina, James
B. Duke, and to a lesser extent, his older
brother Benjamin N. Duke.
" Heavily involved in both tobacco and
textile manufacturing, the Duke brothers
began to explore the possibilities of hydroelectric
power as early as the 1890s, "
wrote historian Robert Durden. " Meanwhile,
in 1900 Walker Gill Wylie and his
brother Robert H. Wylie established the
Catawba Power Co. to supply electricity
to textile mills near Rock Hill, South
Carolina. " A hydropower power plant
(Figure 1) the Wylie brothers completed
on the Catawba River four years later
that was later purchased by the Dukes
kicked off the birth of a unique investorowned
electric utility. Through multiple
mergers and acquisitions, that company
would go on to play a major role in the
industrial transformation of the Piedmont
Carolinas, and later, as one of the
nation's largest power generators and
utility companies.
From the very start, that company-
then known as Southern Power Co. before
it evolved into Duke Power Co. in
1924 and eventually Duke Energy Corp.
in 1997-was " distinctive and different
from most other investor-owned utilities
in several ways, " Durden noted. First, the
company's pioneers envisioned a series
of interconnected single-system generating
plants and a comprehensive development
of an entire river and its valley,
as opposed to piecemeal development.
Second, it enjoyed private capital autonomy
from the Duke brothers that buoyed
18
1. Catawba Power Co.'s 3.3-MW Catawba Hydro Station, which began operating on April 30,
1904, became the first generating station on the Duke Power Co. system. The date is considered
to be the birthdate of Duke Power. Courtesy: Duke Energy
its operational and financial health, and
served to insulate it during the Great
Depression. And third, Duke Power's engineers
adopted a " do-it-yourself " policy
that would continue into the atomic era,
allowing the company to foray easily into
innovation and transformation.
" Duke Power became a national leader
in its field by pioneering with numerous
technologies, " Durden wrote. " The
company's generating plants were recognized
by trade journals and industry
associations as the most efficient in the
nation over a period of many years. "
An Energy Mammoth
Today, Duke Energy Corp., headquartered
in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the
largest investor-owned utilities in the
country. Its sprawling business comprises
three main reportable segments: electric
utilities and infrastructure, gas utilities and
infrastructure, and commercial renewables.
Its electric utility subsidiaries, which
www.powermag.com
include Duke Energy Carolinas, Duke Energy
Progress, Duke Energy Florida, Duke
Energy Indiana, and Duke Energy Ohio,
provide retail service through generation
(Figure 2), transmission, distribution, and
power sales, as well as wholesale sales
to municipalities, cooperatives, and other
load-serving entities.
In total, Duke Energy serves about
8.2 million customers within the Southeast
and Midwest-in a service territory
that spans 91,000 square miles across
six states. All these businesses-with
the exception of Ohio, which operates
in a competitive electricity supply market-operate
as sole suppliers of power
within their service territories, with
services that are priced by state commission-approved
rates. The Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, however,
also approves cost-based rates for
sales to some power and transmission
wholesale customers.
The gas utilities and infrastructure
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POWER May 2022 Intl

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