The Galveston County Daily News

1880s: Thomas Edison tries to fulfill Benjamin Franklin's dream of harnessing electricity for everyday use. He manufactures everything from generators to wires to light bulbs.

Sept. 4, 1882: Edison fires up Pearl Street generating station in New York: the first central-station power plant of its kind. His idea was that bigger generators would make power affordable for average people.

February 1892: Financier J.P. Morgan buys out Edison and several other electric companies and starts General Electric. Edison's protégé, Samuel Insull, moves to Chicago and buys Commonwealth Edison.

1900-1913: Insull builds power stations, buys electric train lines and markets electrical appliances to consumers in town and on the farm. He uses holding companies to control and finance his rising empire.

Early appliances: Fans, irons, vacuum cleaners, lights, stoves, toasters, heaters, radiators, curling irons. Marketed as labor-saving devices, they actually eliminated domestic workers and created the expectation that women do more chores.

1914-1930: Percentage of American households with electricity goes from 16 to 80.

Oct. 24, 1929: Stock market crash.

1930: Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, argues municipal power is much cheaper than privately owned power.

1932: Insull resigns from his bankrupt companies. Investors lose $750 million: $10.5 billion in 2005 dollars.

1934-1935: In response to the Insull collapse, Congress passes the Securities Exchange Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act and the Federal Power Act. It also creates the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration.

1978, 1992: Congress passes the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act and the Energy Policy Act. They significantly alter the model of electricity companies as state-regulated monopolies for the first time since 1935.

1996: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issues Order 888 requiring power companies to give other generators access to their transmission lines. The same year, California becomes the first state to deregulate its electricity market.

2000-2001: Plagued by inadequate power supplies — aggravated by withholding and other manipulations — California suffers rolling blackouts as power prices skyrocket. Houston-based Enron, an early advocate of deregulation that helped manipulate the California market, implodes in a wave of accounting scandals.

Jan. 1, 2002: The electricity market serving 85 percent of Texas is deregulated. During a trial run before it is, Enron and other power companies force up power prices by reporting nonexistent congestion in power lines.

February 2007: Private investors announce $45 billion purchase of Texas power giant TXU, the largest leveraged buyout in corporate history. Critics say the deal amounts to a bet that Texas power prices will keep going up.

March 2007: Texas regulators propose a fine of $210 million against TXU after The Daily News exposed allegations that the company withheld power from the market to push prices up in 2005. The proposed fine was later lowered to $171 million.

May 2007: Texas Legislature concludes its biennial session without acting on proposals to change the deregulation law. Despite promises to lower power prices, electricity prices for residential customers increase 52 percent in the first five years of deregulation.

Oct. 10, 2007: Private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Texas Pacific Group complete their buyout of TXU and change the parent company's name to Energy Furture Holdings Corporation. C. John Wilder, former TXU chairman and chief executive officer, resigns, leaving with at least $277 million worth of stock.