Who invented hydroelectricity?

Answer 1

Hydroelectric power, that is the mating of centuries-old hydraulic power machines, such as waterwheels and turbines, with electric generators was a foregone conclusion once generators became commercially available. Although the first generating station was steam-powered, it must be remembered that steam engines were used at that time primarily as a substitute for water power in locations were water power was not available.

Lester Allen Pelton is commonly mentioned as the inventor of hydroelectric power. This is not true. Pelton invented a type of hydraulic turbine that used a free-jet impulse system to turn a wheel; he patented his Pelton turbine in 1880. Pelton wheels were widely used to provide mechanical power for mining operations in the mountainous country of the western US. In 1887, miners connected a generator to a Pelton wheel and began generating electricity, but Pelton himself had nothing to do with this development.

Five years earlier, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the Vulcan Street Plant went into operation on September 30, 1882. It generated electricity using the power of water from the Fox River already impounded by a dam at an existing paper mill. The plant was the brainchild of two men: H. J. Rogers, president of the Appleton Paper and Pulp Co. and the Appleton Gas Light Co., and H. E. Jacobs, who was a licensing agent for the Western Edison Light Co. of Chicago. The two men were friends, and it is believed that they developed the idea while on a fishing trip together. The Vulcan Street Plant is considered to be the first hydroelectric generating station in the world.
Lester Allan Pelton was an American inventor who created an efficient form of impulse water turbine in 1878 in the goldfields.

In 1887 a miner attached Pelton's wheel to a dynamo and produced the first hydroelectric power in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Just to let everyone know hydroelectric power wasnt created. He just discovered it and found ways to use it.
Nikola Tesla developed the first working system at Niagara falls. The system is still over on the Canadian side with a statue of the man. Quite a work of engineering excellence.

Answer 2

Hydroelectric power was an idea whose time had come. Water power to drive machines directly was already in widespread use when electric power was starting, so it's difficult to say who first connected a waterwheel to a generator. William Armstrong used hydro to generate the electricity to light his home, Cragside, in Northumberland, England, in 1878.