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Water has been harnessed as a source of power for many hundreds of years. Before steam became the predominant form of power in the 19th century, many mills and factories were powered by water wheels. Towards the end of the 19th century the potential for generating electricity from moving water became apparent. The first commercial hydroelectric plant opened in Wisconsin in 1882, on the Fox River, Appleton. It produced 12.5kW which lit two paper mills and a neighbouring residence.
As one of the largest waterfalls in the world, Niagara Falls presented tantalisingly huge potential for generating hydropower. In 1899 it was calculated that the daily force of water passing over the Falls was equal in power to that of all the coal mined in the world each day, then around 200,000 tons.
The first attempt to harness some of this power occurred in the mid-18th century when Daniel Joncaire built a small canal above the Falls and used it to power his sawmill. The Falls are on the US-Canadian border and in 1805 the US Falls and neighbouring area were bought from the State of New York by two brothers, Augustus and Peter Porter. They attempted to develop the potential of Niagara, expanding Joncaire’s canal and providing hydraulic power for their gristmill and tannery.
Augustus Porter had plans for a more involved scheme but died before construction began. A series of companies attempted to follow through the plans, but went bankrupt in the process. Hydroelectricity was first produced at Niagara, on a small scale, in 1881. By 1883, many watermills had been built in the area around the Falls, destroying much of its beauty. In that year Thomas Evershed, a local engineer, recommended that all the buildings be purchased and demolished and a national park created. Similar action was taken on the Canadian side.
In 1890 the International Niagara Commission was formed to consider the best way to develop hydroelectricity at the Falls while maintaining the beauty of the area.
This commission was chaired by Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, and an IMechE past president, William Cawthorne Unwin, served as its secretary. It administered a prize fund of $22,000 (roughly £500,000 in today’s money) and considered many proposals as to the best method of generating and transmitting power.
The question of how best to generate the power was solved quite quickly with the selection of 5,000hp turbines designed by Faesh and Piccard of Geneva. The issue of transmission was more complicated, and it was over three years before the commission came to a decision. In 1890 four methods of transmission were being considered: manila or wire rope, hydraulic pipes, compressed air and electricity. Electricity had clear advantages over the other methods, but the direct current system of transmission then in use was not really suitable for long distances.
It was Nikola Tesla’s invention of the three-phase system of alternating current that enabled distant transmission of electricity. The Niagara system was the first large AC power system created, and was instrumental in the widespread adoption of AC as the best means of transmitting electricity.
The Niagara Falls continued to generate increasing amounts of hydroelectricity until a landslide in 1956 destroyed the largest of the plants. The following year the Niagara Redevelopment Act was passed, granting New York Power Authority the right to develop the US share of the Niagara River’s hydroelectric potential. The new project began generating in 1961 and was the largest hydroelectric scheme in the world at that time. Although no longer the largest in the world, the Falls remains a significant site for hydroelectricity, with a series of plants generating up to 4.4GW.