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A Vermont blacksmith, Thomas Davenport, the inventor of the first American DC electrical motor, installed his motor in a small model car, which he operated on a short circular electrified track.
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First successful test of the light bulb with a carbon filament. It lasted 13.5 hours.
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The first power plant that commercially generated electricity was built and opened. Electricity began flowing to paper mills and some homes within a one-mile radius of the plant on this day.
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The first Edison hydroelectric power plant, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating in Appleton, Wisconsin, with an output of around 12.5 kW.
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Charles Fritts, an American inventor, built the first genuine solar cell by covering selenium with a thin layer of gold.
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Charles F Brush, an American inventor, built the first automatically operated wind turbine for electricity production in Cleveland Ohio.
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The Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada. It is one of the largest sources of hydroelectricity in the world.
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The first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States, Shippingport nuclear power plant, was opened by President Eisenhower as part of his Atoms for Peace program.
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This act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in Albuquerque, New Mexico, changed US energy policy by providing tax incentives and loan guarantees for energy production of various types.
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This energy bill proposed a cap and trade system, under which the government sets a limit on the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted nationally. Companies buy or sell these permits to emit these gases (especially carbon dioxide). Over time, the cap is reduced, so as to reduce total carbon emissions.
