electric cooperative inc. type cooperative industry electric utility founded 1937 headquarters hughesville maryland usa key people joe slater products electricity revenue 370 million 2006 website smeco.coop the southern maryland electric cooperative smeco is an electric distribution cooperative which is headquartered in hughesville maryland . smeco serves approximately 144 000 customers in calvert charles prince george s and st. mary s counties of southern maryland . under its rules as a nonprofit cooperative smeco passes on its costs to its customer members without markup or profit . smeco owns a 77 mw combustion turbine located at the chalk point generating station which by an agreement until 2015 is operated and maintained by mirant . 1 contents 1 history 2 ferc solar complaint 3 references 4 external links history edit in 1937 two committees of citizens from three counties which were seeking aid to construct a local rural electric distribution system under the new deal s rural electrictrification administration formed the southern maryland tri county electric cooperative association . this was reorganized as a cooperative under the smeco name in 1942 . customers were allowed to select suppliers of electricity beginning in 2001 under the electric deregulation legislation enacted in 1999 . 2 smeco has won the j.d. power and associates award for best customer service for the east region midsize utility for the past four years . 3 ferc solar complaint edit smeco has filed a complaint with the federal energy regulatory commission ferc alleging that the maryland public service commission psc coerced utilities into purchasing excess solar power generated by the state s community solar program at much higher retail rates rather than paying the amount it would have cost these utilities to create the power themselves also known as the avoided cost . this would be in violation with the federal public utility regulatory policies act purpa which establishes that any payment given to such qualifying power plants equate the utility s avoided cost . in addition purpa mandates that these plants do not exceed 80 mw of power . 4 recently the development of community solar programs has become increasingly prevalent in order to meet the ever growing demand for new viable energy sources ; however there has been much controversy regarding the surge in net metering consumers due to the resulting cost shifts which negatively affect the non solar community now facing much higher payments to even out the increased benefits given to solar projects . 4 because of the continual reduction in the cost of power ferc has become more concerned with the discrepancy between avoided costs and wholesale prices which continue to prevail . this has placed more focus on purpa s roles and responsibilities in the maintenance and balance of the current energy market . 4 references edit 2006 southern maryland electric cooperative annual report smeco website history page j.d. power and associates press release 13 july 2011 a b c maryland co op challenges state s new community solar program . retrieved 2016 09 15 . external links edit southern maryland electric cooperative website v t e power stations in maryland coal fired generating stations brandon shores chalk point crane dickerson wagner luke mill morgantown smith closed warrior run oil fired peaking stations chalk point dickerson easton power plant wagner morgantown perryman philadelphia road generating station vienna natural gas stations easton power plant gould street wagner notch cliff generating station panda brandywine power plant perryman riverside rock springs generation facility westport generating station hydroelectric dams conowingo deep creek wind farms criterion wind project waste to energy montgomery county resource recovery facility wheelabrator incinerator nuclear plants calvert cliffs energy terminals cove point operators aes corporation exelon nrg energy pjm interconnection raven power talen energy waste management companies bge central maryland pepco delmarva & washington metro area old dominion electric cooperative western maryland southern maryland electric cooperative southern maryland retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title southern maryland electric cooperative & oldid 739613249 categories companies based in marylandpower companies of the united stateselectric generation and transmission cooperatives in the united states navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 15 september 2016 at 19 42 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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