The origins of Duke Energy trace to three men and two inventions in the Piedmont region of North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Walker Gill Wylie, a physician and electrical engineer, had studied the hydroelectric potential of the Catawba River and believed that cheap electricity could transform the textile industry that dominated the Carolina Piedmont. In 1900, Wylie partnered with his brother, Robert H. Wylie, and local investors to form the Catawba Power Company, with $50,000 in capital and a plan to build a hydroelectric dam at India Hook Shoals on the Catawba River. The project faced skepticism: local mill owners doubted that electricity could replace steam power, and investors questioned whether rural North Carolina could support a central power station. Wylie persisted, and in 1904 the Catawba Power Company was reorganized as the Southern Power Company, with Wylie as president. The critical turning point came in 1904 when Wylie met James Buchanan Duke, the tobacco and textile magnate who had already transformed the American cigarette industry through the American Tobacco Company. Duke, born in 1856 on a small farm near Durham, North Carolina, had built a $100 million fortune through vertical integration of tobacco growing, manufacturing, and distribution. He saw in Wylie's hydroelectric scheme an opportunity to power the textile mills that were proliferating across the Piedmont. In 1905, Duke invested $2 million in Southern Power Company and became its controlling shareholder. He appointed William States Lee, a civil engineer who had designed dams for the U.S. Reclamation Service, as chief engineer. Lee's defining decision was to build a series of eleven hydroelectric dams on the Catawba and Yadkin rivers, creating a 200-mile cascade that would generate 200,000 horsepower—enough to power every textile mill in the Carolinas. The first dam, at India Hook Shoals, was completed in 1907 and generated 5,000 horsepower. By 1911, Southern Power had completed four dams and was selling electricity to 36 textile mills. The company's growth accelerated during World War I, when demand for cotton textiles surged and Southern Power's hydroelectric capacity proved more reliable than the steam plants that competing utilities operated. By 1920, Southern Power served 300 industrial customers and 20,000 residential customers across the Carolinas. In 1924, following James B. Duke's death in 1925, the company was renamed Duke Power Company in his honor. The 1920s and 1930s saw Duke Power expand into rural electrification, partnering with the Rural Electrification Administration to bring power to farms and small towns that private investors had ignored. By 1940, Duke Power served 150,000 customers. The post-World War II era brought the company's most transformative decision: the commitment to nuclear power. In 1955, Duke Power announced plans to build its first nuclear plant at Oconee, South Carolina, and by 1973 had three reactors operating. The 1973 oil crisis validated this decision, as Duke Power's nuclear and hydroelectric portfolio insulated it from the fuel cost spikes that devastated gas-dependent utilities. The 1980s brought diversification and consolidation. In 1986, Duke Power acquired Pan Energy, a natural gas company, and in 1987 merged with the American Natural Resources Company to form Duke Energy. The 1990s saw aggressive expansion into unregulated energy trading and generation, including the $8.2 billion acquisition of PanEnergy in 1997 and the $7.7 billion acquisition of Westcoast Energy in 2002. These acquisitions transformed Duke Energy from a regional utility into a national energy company with operations in 15 states and $25 billion in revenue. But the unregulated strategy proved disastrous: the 2001 Enron scandal exposed the risks of energy trading, and Duke Energy wrote down $2.5 billion in merchant generation assets in 2002-2003. The company retreated to its regulated utility roots, spinning off its unregulated generation business as Spectra Energy in 2007 and focusing on core utility operations. The 2006 merger with Cinergy (serving Indiana and Ohio) added 1.5 million customers and 6,000 MW of coal-fired generation, while the 2012 merger with Progress Energy (serving Florida and the Carolinas) added 3 million customers and 22,000 MW of generation—making Duke Energy the largest regulated utility in the United States. The Progress merger was controversial: CEO Bill Johnson resigned after one day in office in 2012 amid a board dispute, and the company faced $1.2 billion in cost overruns at the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida. Lynn Good, who became CEO in 2013, stabilized the company through cost reductions, regulatory settlements, and a renewed focus on the core utility business. Under Good's leadership, Duke Energy invested $40 billion in grid modernization, retired 6,000 MW of coal capacity, added 4,000 MW of solar, and maintained a 98-year dividend streak. The 2024 results—$30.4 billion in revenue, $7.9 billion in operating income, and $4.4 billion in net income—represent the culmination of a 124-year journey from a $50,000 hydroelectric startup to the largest regulated utility in America.