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Defunct electrical company
The Hartford Electric Light Company (HELCO) is a defunct electrical company that was located on Pearl Street in Hartford, Connecticut. HELCO merged with the Connecticut Power Company in 1958. These merged with the Connecticut Light and Power Company (CL&P) and the Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO) in 1966 to form Northeast Utilities (NU). Its former corporate headquarters building and main facility are in the Ann Street Historic District.

The history of the Hartford Electric Light Company (HELCO) begins with the Hartford Steam Company. The steam company built the originally brick building in 1880 (See 'The Hartford Electric Light Company, Pearl Street plant, circa 1902'). The building had about a dozen boilers for producing heat and steam for their customers. The steam company introduced a new technology in 1881, an electric generator. It was Hartford's first electric service. It began actual operations of the steam powered electrical generating plant on Pearl Street in 1882. The first major project the company did was electrical lighting to the Asylum Street railroad station in 1883. HELCO ultimately made Hartford the first city in America with an all electric street lighting system.

Hartford Light and Power Company, HELCO's competitor, bought the steam company and HELCO eventually vacated by 1887. HELCO bought Hartford Light and Power Company in 1896. They then returned to their original Pearl Street plant. The Hartford Electric Light Company operated the first steam turbine by a public utility to produce electricity in America.

HELCO constructed in 1899 a dam on the Farmington River at Tariffville, which is on the edge of the town of Simsbury, Connecticut. There a powerhouse was built to generate electricity. This power plant was built with two pairs of 1300 horsepower water wheels. They connected to two seven hundred kilowatt generators made by Westinghouse. This was the first time aluminum was used for the conductors in a transmission line. The Tariffville dam with the powerhouse was destroyed by flooding that came about because of two sequential hurricanes in August 1955.

The Connecticut Power Company was formed in 1899 as the Marine Power Company. A 1909 engineering report describes the station and its equipment as having two water power stations (See 'HELCO electrical network in 1909') operated in conjunction with it (#1 plant & #2 plant). The two electrical generator plants were located on the Farmington river about twelve miles from Hartford. The three plants were connected together and regulated at the main plant and supplied all the electricity for Hartford. HELCO made several innovations in the electrical industry. They became standard practices. HELCO was the first electric company in the United States to transmit three phase alternating current at high voltage for long distances. The company did this in 1893 from their Rainbow Hydroelectric Station in Windsor, Connecticut, to its main station in Hartford – some eight miles away.