Alameda Power & Telecom (Formerly known as The Bureau of Electricity and Alameda Electric Light and Power System, is the oldest municipal system in operation in California, and one of the oldest municipal systems in the United States, having been acquired by purchase in 1887, at the cost of forty thousand dollars. The plant was erected in 1885, by the Jenny Electric Company at a cost of about twenty thousand dollars and was operated by that company under contract with the City of Alameda, for street lighting service only. The system consisted of thirteen iron masts 150 feet in height, on which surmounted fifty odd, old style, carbon arcs. In 1895, the plant began to serve a few residential and commercial lighting customers.

Alameda Power & Telecom Sign

The generating plant was operated continuously from 1885 to 1919, at which time the increased cost of fuel oil made it more economical to purchase hydro-electric power at wholesale for distribution, than to generate.

Later, during the water shortages of 1920 and 1924, the plant was again put into operation under lease agreements with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and the Great Western Power Company of California. When the prices of fuel oil later decreased, the load had increased to an extent that the plant no longer was adequate to supply the power needed. It therefore was dismantled in 1928, and a part of it was sold.