Electric Energy, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1

History of Power Systems

A large number of great scientists created wonderful innovations that led to the electric power systems as we know them today. Although electricity was discovered around 600 BC, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that we could have electric energy on demand by flipping a switch at every home, school, office, or factory. Today, dependence on electric power is so entrenched in our societies that we cannot imagine our life without electricity. We indeed take electricity for granted, so when we experience an outage, we realize how our life is dependent on electricity. This dependency creates a formidable challenge to engineers to make the power system the most reliable and efficient complex system ...