The Mission Road Power Plant was one of the earliest and largest power generating facilities in San Antonio, with the longest service life of any power plant in the area. At one time it was one of two plants providing two-thirds of the power needed for the entire city.

The history of this particular power plant closely tracks the history of power in San Antonio. Electricity first came to San Antonio in March 1882 in the form of a small arc light-generating system installed in the basement of a dry goods store located at 31 West Commerce Street. Owned by the San Antonio Electric Company, electricity from this plant was distributed for street lighting and commercial lighting to businesses located on Alamo Plaza. The electricity was carried over copper cables hung on poles.

In 1888, Louis Berg entered into competition with the San Antonio Electric Company by establishing a generating facility in La Villita on the south bank of the San Antonio River. In 1890, the San Antonio Electric Company bought out Berg and moved their equipment into his Villita Street plant. Over the next 20 years to 1908, 18 additional generating units were added. As turbo generators require a great deal of water for cooling, the plant was moved to a site along the east side of the San Antonio River about 5 miles from downtown -- the current site of the Mission Road Power Plant.

On December 22, 1909, the first unit-a 2 megawatt (MW) turbo generator requiring 3 boilers-was placed into service at the new facility, then called “Station B.” Additional units were placed into service over time, and by 1930 the plant had one of the first combined cycle units in the U.S. It was also consistently the largest -- after the construction of the 1923 unit, the installed capacity of Station B was 30.5 MW. By 1930 the plant’s capacity totaled 33.5 MW. In the late 1920s the plant came to be known as the Concepcion Road Plant.

In the 1940s the Federal Government broke up large utility holding company monopolies including the San Antonio Public Service Company. With a war on and an uncertain economic future, the City of San Antonio gambled that the local utility would be a valuable investment and purchased it on October 24, 1942. The city created the City Public Service Board to guide and direct the company. The plant was expanded again in 1958 to take on the size it remains today.

Officially decommissioned in 2003, the Mission Road Power Plant is currently used as a training center.