IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2020 - 87

figure 9. A Google satellite view of the Croton Dam hydroelectric station today.

on high-tension transmission in Chicago on 24 May 1907. There was an
excursion the following day to visit the
66,000-V transmission system of the
Grand Rapids-Muskegon Power Company, "this being the highest voltage
plant yet put in commercial operation."
Figure 8 shows the HV transmission
lines of the Grand Rapids-Muskegon
Power Company in 1908. The map is
useful for describing the events of 1906-
1908. The Rogers Dam station became
operational on 1 April 1906, transmitting
at 66,000 V via the Casnovia switching
station to Muskegon and Grand Rapids,
and soon thereafter, the voltage was raised
to 72,000 V. The direct line to Grand Rapids did not exist yet. Construction of the
Croton Dam plant began in June 1906, and
110,000-V service to Grand Rapids started in July 1908. Engineers from around
the world came to inspect the steel towers developed by James B. Foote, which
allowed the transmission lines to be suspended from stacked arrays of link-strain
and link-suspension porcelain disk insulators recently developed at General Electric
(Figure 8). Figure 9 is a satellite view of
the Croton Dam facility today.

Some Milestones of Early
High-Power Hydroelectric
Systems
I have deliberately focused on transmission voltages and distances and not pow-

september/october 2020

er station capacity. The history of early
hydroelectric systems of very large power began when the system of the Niagara
Falls Power Company became operational in 1895 with three-phase transmission
at 11,000 V and a capacity of 11 MW at
powerhouse number 1, which increased
to 38 MW in 1900. When powerhouse
number 2 went online in 1902-1904, the
total capacity increased to 79 MW, and
when a plant on the Canadian side was
added in 1905-1906, the total capacity
surged to 117 MW.
A European milestone event took
place in Germany in 1898 with the
opening of the Rheinfelden threephase, 6,800-V transmission from a
power station of 12.5-MW capacity.
A very large increase in single-station
capacity occurred in 1911, when the
Rjukan three-phase, 11,000-V hydroelectric plant of Norsk hydro-elektrisk
Kvælstofaktieselskab (Norwegian
Hydroelectric Nitrogen Company)
went into service with a capacity of
105 MW. That amount of power would
be used to manufacture large quantities
of fertilizer by combining atmospheric
nitrogen and oxygen by the recently invented Birkeland-Eyde process.
In 1913, the Mississippi River Power Company began transmission at
110,000 V from Keokuk (in Iowa) to
St. Louis, a distance of 230 km, with
a capacity of 112.5 MW. This was con-

sidered a world record for a single station at the time, although it was only
slightly more than the 105 MW of the
1911 Rjukan plant.

For Further Reading
P.-L. Viollet, "From the water wheel
to turbines and hydroelectricity. Technological evolution and revolutions,"
Comptes Rendus Mécanique, vol. 345,
no. 8, pp. 570-580, 2017. doi: 10.1016/j.
crme.2017.05.016.
H. Heald, William Armstrong: Magician of the North, 2nd ed. Alnwick,
U.K.: Northumbria Press, 2011.
D. Goss, History of Grand Rapids
and Its Industries, vol. 2. Chicago, IL:
C. F. Cooper, 1906.
D. B. Rushmore, "The 110,000
volt transmission line of the Grand
Rapids Muskegon Power Company," Gen . Electr. Rev., vol. 12, pp.
86-88, 1909.
G. Bush, Future Builders: The Story of Michigan's Consumers Power
Company. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1973.
E. A. Lof, "The Mississippi River
hydro-electric development at Keokuk,
Iowa-Part I," Gen. Electr. Rev., vol. 17,
pp. 85-98, 1914.
E. A. Lof, "The Mississippi River
hydro-electric development at Keokuk,
Iowa-Part II," Gen. Electr. Rev., vol. 17,
pp. 375-391, 1914.

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