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In the early 1970's many schools and hospitals that did not have access to natural gas were looking for a cheaper fuel for their steam boilers than #2 fuel oil. The company I worked for in Pittsburgh, Pa. came up with the solution, bituminous coal. We converted many of these boilers to coal using either a ram or screw stoker. The screw stoker was used on smaller boilers while the ram stoker was used on larger units. Most of the conversions were done on horizontal fire tube boilers. To reduce the need for manual tube cleaning, soot blowers were added. Most of the time a brick arch was added to the firebox above the burning coal to enhance the burning of that coal. Other devices were added to help produce a clean burn so smoke from the stack or chimney was almost non-existent. Imagine, burning soft coal with little or no smoke.

In 1922, my village voted 177 to 48 to install it's first power plant.

$11,405 for the building and $6,041 for a 1 cylinder 38 KW engine and switchgear. That was a "Hothead" diesel that could be started with the "shotgun shell" explosive charge if needed.
It was still in the building in 1968 and used as a "peaker" to get thru the noon hour.

The plant ran only 18 hours a day.....why would you need electricity at night when you were in bed?

Rates ranged from 7 cents to 17 cents per KWH, but by 1925 rates went up to 10 to 18 cents/KWH, there was a minimum of $1.50 per month.....no small amount in the 1920-30's

In the 1920's a 10,000 gallon train load of fuel oil cost 2.75 cents per gallon.

Today my electric rate is 16 cents/KWH......think about what fuel oil costs today.
Adjusting for inflation, electric rates have gone down from 1920.
We get our power from the grid and thru various agencies that buy on a daily basis.
So the source is hydro, coal, and Nuclear.

We just are in the process of adding another diesel generator, 2.1 MW....a lot for us.
We will lease 1.8 MW of it to the power pool for their stand by use.
This puts our plant up to 3.35 MW for our load of about 2.0 MW.

In the 60's we were considered very backward to keep our power plant as all other small town scrapped theirs and connected to the grid. They now envy us when the grid might go down for 1 day to 1 week.
In a blackout we can be back on line in 30 minutes.

Local (town) electric plants had to be 60CPS AC close-enough for electric clocks to keep good time. (Quartz comes later.) When my dad was in high school he had the gofer job at the power plant. The Chief Engineer had a very fine pocket watch, which he checked every day against Railway Time. In the power house was a good AC wall-clock, which followed the errors of the electric plant. He'd check one against the other and trim the steam-engine governor so they agreed every day.

Here's 1919. Coal getting hard to get, they were burning light oil (kerosene) to stay warm.
This idea of stop-starting a fire on electrical contact was radical. As you appreciate if you ever managed a coal or even wood fire. Solid fuels take a long time to go cold and a long time (and puffing) to hot-up again.