Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| Company type | Cooperative |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electric utility |
| Founded | 1937 |
| Headquarters | Hughesville, Maryland, US |
Key people | Sonja Cox |
| Products | Electricity |
| Revenue | US$370 million (2006) |
| Website | www |
The Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) is an electric distribution cooperative headquartered in Hughesville, Maryland, United States. SMECO serves approximately 161,000 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.
In 1937, two committees of citizens from three counties sought aid to construct a local rural electric distribution system under the New Deal's Rural Electrification Administration. They formed the Southern Maryland Tri-County Electric Cooperative Association, which was reorganized as a cooperative under the SMECO name in 1942. Customers were allowed to select suppliers of electricity beginning in 2001 under the Maryland Electric Deregulation legislation enacted in 1999.[1] From 2007 to 2011, SMECO won the J.D. Power and Associates award for best customer service for a midsize utility.[2]
SMECO owned a 77 MW gas turbine generator located at the Chalk Point Generating Station, which began operation in 1990 and was operated and maintained by NRG Energy. In 2015, NRG acquired the turbine plant from SMECO.[3]
