تيار متردد
The Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant and the original Niagara Falls Adams Power Plant were among the first hydroelectric alternating current power plants. The first long distance transmission of single-phase electricity was from a hydroelectric generating plant in Oregon at Willamette Falls which in 1890 sent power fourteen miles downriver to downtown Portland for street lighting. In 1891, a second transmission system was installed in Telluride Colorado. The San Antonio Canyon Generator was the third commercial single-phase hydroelectric AC power plant in the United States to provide long-distance electricity. It was completed on December 31, 1892, by Almarian William Decker to provide power to the city of Pomona, California, which was 14 miles away. In 1893, he designed the first commercial three-phase power plant in the United States using alternating current—the hydroelectric Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant near Redlands, California. Decker's design incorporated 10 kV three-phase transmission and established the standards for the complete system of generation, transmission and motors used today. The Jaruga Hydroelectric Power Plant in Croatia was set in operation on 28 August 1895. The two generators (42 Hz, 550 kW each) and the transformers were produced and installed by the Hungarian company Ganz. The transmission line from the power plant to the City of Šibenik was long on wooden towers, and the municipal distribution grid 3000 V/110 V included six transforming stations. Alternating current circuit theory developed rapidly in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century. Notable contributors to the theoretical basis of alternating current calculations include Charles Steinmetz, Oliver Heaviside, and many others. Calculations in unbalanced three-phase systems were simplified by the symmetrical components methods discussed by Charles Legeyt Fortescue in 1918.