Durden Recounts Rise of Duke Power

A new book by Duke University historian Robert F. Durden recounts how James B. Duke foresaw the importance of electrical power at the start of the 20th century and its potential to transform not only the Southern economy but also the quality of life. Electrifying the Piedmont Carolinas: The Duke Power Company (1904-1997) is the story of how the well-known industrialist developed the production of electricity in the Carolinas and how, after his death, the company eventually expanded far beyond its original boundaries. It is being published by Carolina Academic Press in Durham, an independent scholarly press, and is expected to be in bookstores in late April. "He was a very bright man," Durden said of Duke. "Essentially, his plan was to build hydroelectric plants that could be used to run textile mills, which he saw as the escape route from massive agrarian poverty." By the time of Duke's death in 1925, more than a dozen power plants were completed. The primary founder of Duke University lived to see what he envisioned - that the larger part of the textile industry would in fact move from the North to the South, Durden said. "While the bright economic picture of the Piedmont Carolinas at the close of the 20th century resulted from a wide variety of factors - an able and dependable workforce, a favorable business climate, excellent transport facilities, and a relatively benign natural climate - the reliable and comparatively cheap electricity provided by the Duke Power Company also has clearly been an important element in the region's economic advancement throughout the century," Durden writes in the preface of his book. Durden, a professor emeritus of history at Duke University, was commissioned to write Electrifying the Piedmont Carolinas by the Duke Power Company in 1997. He was given complete access to the company's archival material and unconditional freedom to interpret its history. Durden's research included an oral history conference with several retired executives and other longtime employees. The 217-page book begins with the establishment of the Southern Power Company, forerunner of Duke Power Company, and the construction of one hydroelectric plant on the Catawba River in 1904. According to Durden, the power company originally was the brainchild not of Duke, but of Dr. Gill Wylie, a native South Carolinian who saw potential in the Catawba's undeveloped water-power sites and who also had an idea for linking a series of hydroelectric plants on the river. Wylie recruited William States Lee, another South Carolinian and a promising engineer, to design and link together several generating plants with high-voltage transmission lines. Initially, there was little progress because of a lack of money. Then the men convinced Duke to join them in 1905. Bolstered by Duke's financial resources, the three men worked together to oversee what would become the first interconnected system of power plants and the related development of an entire river and its valley. Other such plants around the nation had been built to serve either a single city or a major factory. "This meant not only a more reliable type of electric service, but also a more efficient and economical use of hydro power," Durden notes in the preface. Successive chapters recount the arduous labor and engineering feats employed in constructing the Catawba system. Duke Power's engineers had always designed the company's plants and dams, but in the 1920s they began to construct them as well. A decade later, as the company endured the Depression, it came to rely increasingly on coal-fired steam plants, which eventually overtook the hydro plants in importance, Durden notes. Because of Duke Power's unique do-it-yourself construction policy, the company's coal-fired plants long held the national record for fuel efficiency. Later chapters focus on the company's financial challenges during the 1960s and '70s and how it contended with them, as well as the strategies it used in preparing for deregulation and the heightened competition that ensued. The book ends with the merger of Duke Power and Pan Energy, a Houston-based natural gas company, in 1997, marking the last days of the company as it was known. From that point forward, Duke Power became a subsidiary - albeit the largest one - of Duke Energy Corporation. Today, Duke Energy has 22,000 employees and a wide range of energy and research facilities in more than 50 countries worldwide. The company is second in gas marketing in the United States and third in power marketing. Duke Energy also is one of the country's top 10 generators of electricity. Durden has taught at Duke for more than 40 years. He is the author of The Dukes of Durham, a history of the Duke family; The Launching of Duke University, which chronicled the institution's early years; and Lasting Legacy to the Carolinas: The Duke Endowment (1924-1994).

Written by Noah Bartolucci.