Puget Holding Co LLC history

1883 Charles Fritts builds the first genuine solar cell.

Puget Sound Energy's history began in 1885 when Sydney Z. Mitchell and F.H. Sparling opened an office in Seattle as northwest regional agents for the Edison Electric Light Company.

On March 22, 1886, Mitchell and Sparling gave a successful demonstration of electricity to Seattle citizens, and soon after Seattle Electric's initial system had grown to 250 lamps, the first central station system for incandescent electric lighting west of the Rocky Mountains.

Meanwhile, Doctor E.C. Kilbourne, a Seattle dentist, founded the Pacific Electric Light Company in 1890 when he saw the advantages of serving lighting and streetcar power loads on combined systems.

Remarkably, construction on the Snoqualmie Falls Plant, the first completely underground electric generating facility in the world, was begun and completed in 1898.

They approached Jacob Furth, a prominent Seattle banker, and convinced him to become president in 1900 of the newly formed Seattle Electric Company.

In 1912, Seattle Electric incorporated as the Puget Sound Traction, Light & Power Company.

In 1913 near Lynden, for example, the company constructed what is believed to be the first power line in the United States built specifically to serve farm customers.

In 1925 at Puyallup, it established the Farm Power Laboratory, a unique research center where laborsaving uses of electricity on the farm could be demonstrated and promoted.

Another first for Puget Power came in 1926 when it installed a cross-Sound submarine cable from Richmond Beach, north of Seattle, to President's Point, south of Kingston on the Kitsap Peninsula.

In 1928, Puget Power began construction of the Rock Island Dam on the Columbia River, one of the most ambitious projects in its history.

In 1930 state voters passed the District Power Bill, which allowed the formation of county Public Utility Districts (PUDs) to enter the electricity distribution business.

The first four units were brought online in 1933 with a capacity of 80,000 kilowatts.

Despite these victories, by 1936 13 counties had voted to form PUDs.

1937 The Bonneville Dam begins delivering electric power from the Columbia River.

In 1950, Seattle made a formal offer to purchase Puget Power.

Puget Power accepted a purchase agreement calling for final closing on February 27, 1953.

In 1960, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission granted Puget Power a 10 percent rate increase, the first increase in the company's history.

After an accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the planned construction of Puget Power's Pebble Springs and Skagit Nuclear Power Projects were canceled.

1994 The first solar dish generator is tied to a utility grid.

PSE lost one of it's biggest industrial clients, The Boeing Co., in the summer of 2001.

Reynolds stated that PSE is in good shape until 2004 for electricity generation and has expressed plans to "improve relations with the community, employees, customers, and investors.