In 1907, Lay secured congressional approval for the construction of a dam on the Coosa River at the U.S. A few industries had generators for lights or motors. Some Alabama cities and towns generated a small amount of electricity from isolated mostly coal-fired dynamos that operated street lights, occasional street cars, and some residential lighting. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Alabama was an agricultural state with little electricity-generating capacity and no transmission system. The Alabama Power Company was incorporated in Gadsden, on December 4, 1906, by Cherokee County native William Patrick Lay.

Bibb Graves‘s term for large corporations in the state’s business center), its policies were often at odds with other big businesses, such as its recruitment of industry into the state, which was opposed by some industrialists who were concerned that labor competition might lead to increased wages. Sometimes identified as one of the Birmingham “Big Mules,” (Gov. In the World War II era, Alabama Power lobbied to locate defense industries and military bases in the state and after the war encouraged the conversion of these facilities to peacetime use. The company’s ownership and subsequent donation to the federal government of its dam site at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River during World War I threw Alabama Power into the middle of a national debate over public versus private generation and transmission of electricity. Alabama Power built the first large hydroelectric dam in Alabama and was sending electricity to the Birmingham industrial district by 1914. The company’s development is inextricably entwined with the history of Alabama and has been on the leading edge of economic development issues for most of its history.

Founded in 1906, the company established the first central station generation and transmission system in Alabama. Alabama Power Company is the largest, oldest, and historically the most significant state utility.

Alabama power assistance programs