Both Otter Tail Power Company's industrial customers and its business customers were quick to  understand the benefits of electrical service. The steady stream of new power tools, for instance, gave rise to machine shops, auto and implement repair facilities, construction businesses, and other establishments whose primary power source had been steam or battery banks. As Otter Tail grew in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, those businesses now had all-day electrical service with improved power quality.

Businesses were able to expand their line of machine tools and avoid more costly labor. The use of power lathes, grinders, screw machines, sanders, saws, and drills allowed shops to manufacture products faster and with more precision. As time passed, electricity powered more modern tools such as compressors and impact wrenches.

Arc lights

The earliest electrical application in most businesses was lighting, which allowed retail customers to display items more attractively and extend their business hours each day. Lighting also allowed small manufacturing shops, processing facilities, and others to realize productivity improvements while making the workplace safer.

The earliest lighting load served by Otter Tail Power Company was electric arc lighting. Although it was best suited for outdoor use, some commercial buildings used it inside as well. The arcing process produces light when high voltage is passed between two electrodes in a gas-filled glass tube. The gas essentially glows as long as the current persists. With electric arc lighting, neon signs suddenly brought colored light to many of Otter Tail's main streets.

Arc lighting is about 200 times more intense than filament lighting (more commonly known as incandescent lighting). To reduce the intensity for indoor use, building owners commonly shielded the bulb with a smoked or muted glass plate. Its intensity, however, provided film projector light and allowed many movie theatres to spring up across the company's service area.

Early arc lights burned very hot and the bulbs were short-lived. They had a tendency to not relight until they were completely cooled. While arc lights are not common today, the technology endures in welding and spot lighting. Aside from its intensity, the major advantage to an electric arc is that it mimics the sun's light spectrum and served as a natural light substitute in photography studios and early tanning shops.

Lighting improvements continue

Across the country arc lighting was quickly superseded by incandescent lighting-the common light bulb. Incandescent lighting quickly became far superior to the arc light because it was not as intense and it gave a warmer, more soothing glow. Instead of an electric arc, it employs a metal filament across which electric current passes.

Early incandescent lamps suffered from two major technical flaws. First, bulb life was short. That disadvantage was solved in 1906 with the introduction of the tungsten filament. Second, bulbs tended to blacken with use. Again, a 1913 innovation solved that problem by filling the glass bulb with an inert gas. In 1924, the first frosted light bulb was introduced.

Although a boon to early businesses, electric lighting was expensive and remained somewhat of a luxury in Otter Tail Power Company's service area until the late 1910s and early 1920s. Two conditions contributed to the high cost of lighting. First, a business owner faced a major investment in having a building wired for electrical service including switches and lamp bases, not to mention the cost of bulbs. Manufacturers continually reduced those costs through technological improvements and mass production. In fact, in 1964, the General Electric Company estimated that the cost of lighting had been reduced to 1/30th of its turn-of-the-century cost in real dollars.

The second cost obstacle was the electric rate. Electric rates historically went down as kilowatt hour sales go up. Because early electric loads were light, the cost per kilowatt hour was often high. Early managers understood the relationship between price and usage well. They also understood the economics of maximizing the use of their assets through load-shaping and having those advantages flow to the consumer.

To build load and reduce consumer's price, Otter Tail Power Company was a heavy promoter of electric lighting. It employed lighting specialists who helped consumers design their lighting schemes. Lighting displays adorned the company's offices. The traveling Electrical Exposition showed consumers the advantages of electric lighting as well as other developing applications. Company employees often stocked light bulbs at home and sold them to neighbors as needed. What's more, light bulb manufacturers worked with Otter Tail Power Company and other utilities to hold in lighting promotions. Gradually, load building and hard work brought prices down.

By the early 1930s, fluorescent lighting was being introduced in some retail stores, commercial and industrial buildings in the United States. Fluorescent lighting is produced when electricity excites a vapor inside a glass tube causing the inner surface of the tube to glow. However, it did not become common until the middle years of World War II. By 1951, fluorescent lighting had become more popular with commercial customers than incandescent.

Throughout its 100-year history, Otter Tail Power Company has assisted business customers in making optimal use of lighting. Today, customers can achieve major energy efficiency savings by updating their lighting. These energy savings also offer the company a means of delaying additional generation. Compact fluorescent lamps are rapidly replacing  incandescent bulbs, just as that technology replaced the old arc lamp.

These energy savers emit the same amount of light while requiring far less energy for illumination. The dollars saved through energy efficiency more than pay for the higher cost of the fluorescent bulb over its long life.

Keeping things cool

People at Otter Tail Power Company had little inkling that the 19th Century invention of a French monk would revolutionize the way food was made available to the public. In 1911, following the acquisition of the monk's patent, the General Electric Company unveiled the first commercially available refrigerator.

People didn't make a bee line, however, to the local hardware store. The early models sold for about $1,000, which was twice the cost of a car at that time. By 1920, more than 200 companies were manufacturing refrigerators in the United States.

Refrigeration in commercial buildings began to show up in the company's service area in the middle 1920s-even though a refrigerator still sold for over $700. But as unit prices came down, butcher shops, taverns, restaurants, and small grocery stores installed refrigerators, which were not much larger than those homeowners were purchasing as well.

Refrigeration also enabled nearly each Otter Tail Power Company community of any size to have a local creamery, which could make use of homogenization and pasteurization to make dairy products safer and to have longer shelf lives.

Early refrigerator motors and compressors produced a lot of heat, so the motors were often housed in an adjoining room or in the cellar. A belt extended through the wall or floor and drove the refrigeration process. By the late 1920s, motors and compressors were positioned on top of the unit.

Freon was another major improvement in refrigeration and was introduced in the early 1930s. Until then, refrigerators' heat absorbing gases were highly toxic, even deadly. A leaky refrigerator was as dangerous as a leaky heating system. With the introduction of Freon, manufactures could make bigger, more powerful units without the fear of dangerous leaks.

Refrigeration became as common here as in other parts of the United States, especially with retailers. They became common features in small neighborhood grocery stores and along main streets. Grocers could now prepare, freeze, and store food and keep it fresh until bought. They also made it possible for people to purchase products like ice cream and cold beverages, which up until then, had to be consumed when purchased.

Electronics - Otter Tail Power Company electrons doing new things

Electrical refers to the passage of a charge through a metal conductor such as copper or aluminum. Electronics refers to the passage of an electrical charge through a semi conducting material like silicon. The first use of electronics by Otter Tail Power Company customers occurred with the advent of the radio receiver (the wireless) popularized in the 1930s and 1940s.

Consumer electronics have had their greatest impact in entertainment, communication, and office applications. Personal computers, telephones, audio equipment, televisions, calculators, camcorders are commonplace in the company's service area as they are across the country. For businesses, electronics have vastly improved functional areas like accounting and recordkeeping, inventory control, human resource management, and credit and billing.   

Saving kilowatt hours

With the energy crisis of the 1970s and the sharp rate increases brought about by capital investments, Otter Tail Power Company and every other American utility entered an era of encouraging customers to do more with less.

Early energy conservation programs focused on obvious targets such as heating, air-conditioning and lighting. Business customers began installing programmable thermostats, energy efficient windows and doors, more highly efficient motors, and other devices that cut back on energy use or switched load to off-peak hours.