Energy · 1939

Gas turbine power plant

A combustion turbine generates electricity with no boiler at all.

Brown Boveri's 4 MW gas turbine at Neuchatel, Switzerland entered service in 1939. Fast-starting gas turbines became the grid's peaking plants and, paired with steam, the most efficient thermal generators.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Jet engine 1939
Steam turbine 1884

What it led to 1

Combined-cycle gas plant 1960

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World electricity generation Latest: 31.8k TWh (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Fossil fuel consumption Latest: 144k TWh (2025) Source: Our World in Data