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energy corporations assured the city's “industries against any interruptions in service.” 43
Could all this occur in a backward region? To the contrary, Georgia Power's access to a re-
newable energy source, its engineers' incorporation of transnational technologies, and the
company's interconnected hydraulic electrical generation system linked the state's hinter-
land resources and factories to Atlanta's urban-industrial core. This modern—and inequit-
able—system also delivered energy to a far larger constellation of New South hinterlands
and hives.
Energy companies around the country began experimenting with interconnected produc-
tion facilities and transmission grids in the early decades of the twentieth century. Powerful
southeastern energy corporations, however, put the most complete system into operation.
Electrical engineer William S. Murray promoted one such system, called a “superpower
zone,” to coordinate energy production and distribution throughout the Northeast's metro-
politan corridor and across state lines. In a 1921 U.S. Geological Survey report, Murray as-
serted that a coordinated and privately managed energy grid could facilitate technological
standardization and assure reliable service. Northeastern energy executives, however, were
reluctant to participate in electrical interconnections in their region. 44 In stark contrast, the
major southeastern energy companies—Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Duke Power, and
Tennessee Power—did not share this reluctance. In an example of extraordinary business
acumen, these independent companies began interconnecting in 1912 and assembled a fully
connected Super Power grid by 1921. According to utility trade journal editors and water
professionals such as Thorndike Saville, the New South's pre-1930 Super Power system
was “unparalleled in the world” and represented “a more complete integration of power-
producing and transmission capacity” than any other system on the planet. 45
Production and distribution interconnections were not uncommon in the United States
and Canada, but the southeastern system's scale and scope were remarkable. Private energy
executives enlarged, and engineers consciously built Super Power during the roaring 1920s
by way of corporate consolidation. In 1924 the Southeastern Power and Light holding com-
pany reorganized the Alabama Power Company and other utilities, including two firms that
subsequently made up the Georgia Power Company at its founding. Then in 1929, the New-
York-City-based Commonwealth and Southern Corporation assumed a 40 percent owner-
ship of the Southeastern Power and Light and all of its subsidiaries, including Alabama
Power and Georgia Power. 46 Duke Power Company also consolidated smaller energy util-
ities in North Carolina and South Carolina but was never financially tied to larger regional
or national utility holding companies. 47
Super Power—or what Vance in 1932 defined as a hydroelectric complex—was a lot
like another complex that tied regions together. Super Power proponents, such as Alabama
Power Company president Thomas Martin, defended these massive corporate linkages and
the electrical production infrastructure by equating Super Power with the railroad systems
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