Who developed the idea of a central electric power station?

Answer 1

This would have to be Thomas Edison, who invented coal fired power plants to supply the electricity to customers using his electric light bulb.

There had been earlier coal fired electric plants to provide electricity for the earlier electric arc lights, but these were on a much smaller scale than Edison's.

Before that there were illuminating gas plants producing many different gases for home and business lighting purposes.

Note that the priority in all these cases was to provide lighting, not power for general use and the products could not be transmitted over long distances.

It was Nikola Tesla that invented the high voltage AC power plant (his first one used hydroelectric power from Niagara falls, not coal) and for the first time enabled electricity to be transmitted over long distances from the supplier to the consumer.

Tesla first invented his AC system while he was an employee of Edison, but Edison rejected it as he did not want to make such expensive changes to his existing DC system in which he already had made a large investment. Tesla soon quit and was hired by Westinghouse, who soon gave him the chance to try his AC system in the Niagara Falls hydroelectric power plant. Tesla's AC system was soon demonstrated to require less initial investment and to operate more efficiently than Edison's DC system.

Edison continued to fight the change from DC power plants to AC power plants, including a Propaganda publicity campaign proclaiming AC to be more dangerous than DC and thus unsafe for household use, But eventually AC won and Edison's systems gradually converted from DC to AC.

Answer 2

Thomas Edison