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Benjamin Franklin went outside in a lighting storm with a key attached to a kite and discovered that it attracts electricity.
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William Robert Grove developed the first fuel cell, which produced electrical by combining hydrogen and oxygen.
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Thomas Edison invented an incandescent light bulb that could be used for about 40 hours without burning out.
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The first hydroelectric energy plant was placed on the Fox River in 1882 in Appleton, Wisconsin
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Charles F Brush built the first automatically operated wind turbine for electricity production in Cleveland, Ohio. 1887-1888
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A solar-heating system that used water was placed in a commercial building for the first time as the sole source for interior heat,
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The first actual nuclear power plant in America cranked up its generators in 1954. No nuclear power plants have been licensed in the United States since the partial meltdown of the reactor core of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.
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During the 1960's, the first large scale industrial geothermal energy power plant was constructed in the U.S.A and produces 11 megawatts of environmentally friendly, renewable, geothermal electricity.
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The first small biomass power plants were built in America in 1982.
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The nation's first commercial tidal power plant is going online this week near Eastport, Maine, with a 34-ton rotating seafloor turbine that looks like an old-fashioned push lawnmower blade but generates enough electricity for 25 nearby homes.
