The AES history

Sales grew an additional 75 percent the following year, while net company income witnessed similarly spectacular growth, soaring from $1.6 million in 1988 to $42.6 million in 1991. It was an auspicious start for the struggling company, which, over the course of the next 11 years (1984-94), proceeded to build or acquire ten new power plants.

The firm's luck took a turn for the better in 1985, when Sant and Bakke invested all of AES's assets in a single deal: a Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, coal-burning plant.

Study into such a program was initiated in 1987 after growing concern by company executives that such emissions were contributing to global warming and therefore having a deleterious effect on the environment.

1988: Pioneering the model of Independent Power Producer (IPP), AES became the first and largest IPP in the US with three cogeneration plants in operation in California (Placerita), Pennsylvania (Beaver Valley) and Texas (Deepwater)

1989: Caring for our carbon before it was common, AES created the first documented carbon offset program in the US by planting 52 million trees in Guatemala to offset carbon emissions from a plant in Connecticut

One startling discovery was that the S-boxes appeared to be secure against an attack known as Differential Cryptanalysis which was only publicly discovered by Biham and Shamir in 1990.

1991: Going public with investors, AES listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: AES)

Bakke, for instance, estimated that up until about the mid-1992, 70 percent of the money that AES spent on new business activity was spent in the United States.

However, despite all this controversy, in 1994 NIST reformed DES for government use for a further five years for use in areas other than “classifed”.

In fact, by 1995, the firm was spending an estimated 85 percent of its venture capital abroad.

In January 1997, NIST announced a competition for the successor to DES. To allay the suspicions that the NSA had placed “back doors” in DES, the competition was to be open and public, and the encryption algorithm was available for use royalty-free worldwide.

In 1998, it announced its $885 million purchase of United States-based Cilcorp Inc., which was completed the following year.

The firm also acquired California-based NewEnergy Inc. in July 1999.

Over the course of three competitive rounds and intense cryptanalysis by the world’s foremost experts on encryption, NIST selected the winner, the Rijndael (pronounced “Rhine doll”) algorithm of Belgian cryptograhers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen in October 2000.

In early 2001, AES's growth and expansion appeared to be unflappable.

The firm also began to divest its merchant generation businesses and in June 2002 announced the sale of its NewEnergy arm to Constellation Energy Group.

However as of 2003, AES with key sizes of 192 and 256 bits has been found to be secure enough to protect information up to top secret.

2005: Seeing a greener energy future for the world, AES made an investment in wind generation, acquiring SeaWest, one of the largest wind companies in the US and starts its expansion into cleaner energy sources

2006: Focusing on continuous improvement means continuous benefits for our stakeholders that matters most, AES launched AES Performance Excellence Program (APEX) to drive greater innovation, efficiency and process improvement in its day-to-day operations

2008: Phil Odeen became AES’ third Chairman of the Board

2009: Beginning a new era of firm renewables with utility-scale energy storage, AES connected the first utility-scale system in the world in Indianapolis and installed the first commercially operating system at the Los Andes facility in Chile

Electricity consumption in the United States, for instance, was expected to grow at an average annual rate of 1.9 percent until the year 2010, according to the Edison Electric Institute.

2011: Together with the Philippines, AES became the first company to win two Edison Electric Institute Awards within a five-year period for its world-class turn-around of the Masinloc facility in the Philippines

2012: Working together with Chile, AES received an Edison Electric Institute Award for its hybrid plant model for the future combining energy storage with conventional generation

2013: Charles Rossotti became AES’ fourth Chairman of the Board

2015: Expanding its distributed energy capabilities, AES acquired Mainstreet Power to add distributed solar resources to its portfolio in the rapidly expanding distributed solar market

2016: Working together with the Netherlands and Northern Ireland, AES again received the International Edison Electric Institute Award for its Advancion technology and the global expansion of its energy storage services

2017: Seeing the future in solar, AES acquired sPower, the largest independent solar developer in the US with Alberta Investment Management Co (AIMCo)

2018: Jay Morse became AES’ fifth Chairman of the Board

2019: Together with KIUC in Kauai, AES won the Edison Electric Institute Award for helping the island meet its renewable enable targets with the world’s largest solar PV Peaker plant and energy storage facility

2020: Being recognized for our people being our energy, AES named to the Fast Company List of the Best Workplaces for Innovators Sept 2020: Dayton Power & Light announced Smart Operations Center in Ohio, the first of its kind in the United States