Pearl Street Station was the first commercial central

power plant A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an el ...

in the United States. It was located at 255–257 Pearl Street in the

Financial District A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, just south of Fulton Street on a site measuring . The station was built by the

Edison Illuminating Company The Edison Illuminating Company was established by Thomas Edison on December 17, 1880, to construct electrical generating stations, initially in New York City. The company was the prototype for other local illuminating companies that were establis ...

, under the direction of

Francis Upton Francis Robbins Upton (1852 in Peabody, Massachusetts – March 10, 1921 in Orange, New Jersey) was an American physicist and mathematician. Upton worked alongside Thomas Edison in the development of incandescent light bulbs, electric generator ...

, hired by

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

History

Pearl Street Station consumed coal for fuel; it began with six

dynamo file:DynamoElectricMachinesEndViewPartlySection USP284110.png, "Dynamo Electric Machine" (end view, partly section, ) A dynamo is an electrical generator that creates direct current using a commutator (electric), commutator. Dynamos were the f ...

s, and it started generating electricity on September 4, 1882, serving an initial load of 400 lamps at 82 customers. By 1884, Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps. The station was originally powered by custom-made Porter-Allen

high-speed steam engine High-speed steam engines were one of the final developments of the stationary steam engine. They ran at a high speed, of several hundred rpm,, 400 to 1,200 rpm which was needed by tasks such as electricity generation. Defining characteristics ...

s designed to provide 175

horsepower Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are t ...

at 700 rpm, but these proved to be unreliable with their sensitive governors. They were removed and replaced with new engines from Armington & Sims that proved to be much more suitable for Edison's dynamos. Pearl Street Station was also the world's first

cogeneration Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise- wasted heat from elec ...

plant. While the steam engines provided grid electricity, Edison made use of the thermal byproduct by providing

steam heating A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (short: HVAC) systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces. ...

to local manufacturers and nearby buildings on the same Manhattan block. Pearl Street Station served what was known as the "First District" (bounded clockwise from north by

Spruce Street Spruce Street is a three-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. It starts at Park Row, near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, and runs east to Gold Street, intersecting with Nassau Street. History Sp ...

, the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

, Wall Street, and Nassau Street). The district, so named because of its importance in the history of electric power, contained several other power stations such as the Excelsior Power Company Building. The station burned down in 1890, destroying all but one dynamo that is now kept in the

Greenfield Village Museum The Henry Ford (also known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village, and as the Edison Institute) is a history museum complex in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, United States. The museum collection contains ...

in Dearborn, Michigan.

Scale models

In 1929 the Edison Company constructed three scale working models of the station. When a button was pushed, a motor turned the engines, generators, and other equipment in the model. A set of lamps connected to labelled buttons identified the various areas of the building. Cut-outs in the side of the model building allowed examination of the boilers on the first level, reciprocating steam engines and dynamos on the reinforced second level, and the control and test gear on the third and fourth levels. The models were constructed to a scale of one-half inch to the foot and were 62 inches long, 34 inches high and 13 inches wide. The models still exist and are on display at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

in Washington, D.C.; at the

Consolidated Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...

Learning Center in

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

, New York; and at the

Henry Ford Museum The Henry Ford (also known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village, and as the Edison Institute) is a history museum complex in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, United States. The museum collection contains ...

in Dearborn, Michigan. Up to 31 people worked on constructing the models which took about 6 months to complete.

References

External links

Pearl Street Station from the IEEE Global History NetworkIndustrial Motor Power Corp., What is Cogeneration?
*Edison Electric Institute
''History of the Electric Power Industry''
Retrieved 13 April 2005. *Smithsonian Institution

Retrieved 13 April 2005. {{Coord, 40, 42, 28, N, 74, 00, 17, W, type:landmark_source:kolossus-frwiki, display=title Coal-fired power stations in New York (state) Consolidated Edison Demolished buildings and structures in Manhattan Energy infrastructure completed in 1882 Financial District, Manhattan Former coal-fired power stations in the United States Former power stations in New York City

History

Scale models

See also

References

External links