California Electrification durring the depression?

Question

I need to know about Electrification durring the great depression in southern California. ASAPP

Answer 1

Alameda Power & Telecom (Formerly known as The Bureau of Electricity and Alameda Electric Light and Power System, is the oldest municipal system in operation in California, and one of the oldest municipal systems in the United States, having been acquired by purchase in 1887, at the cost of forty thousand dollars .

The generating plant was operated continuously from 1885 to 1919, at which time the increased cost of fuel oil made it more economical to purchase hydro-electric power at wholesale for distribution, than to generate.

Later, during the water shortages of 1920 and 1924, the plant was again put into operation under lease agreements with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and the Great Western Power Company of California. When the prices of fuel oil later decreased, the load had increased to an extent that the plant no longer was adequate to supply the power needed. It therefore was dismantled in 1928, and a part of it was sold.



The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal agency, based in Portland, markets about 50 percent of this power. (Others include the Western Area Power Administration.)

BPA was created in 1937 to market the power from dams built during the Depression to aid economic development in the then-isolated region.


The California Electric Company as we know it today began in 1924 when an electrical engineer and founder of the California Electrical Construction Company, C.I. Chamblin, sold his East Bay interests in the firm to Dan Bronson for $10. Bronson re-organized as the California Electric Company