Santee cooper Photo by Jim Huff / The problem for South Carolina's power providers, such as the Cross Generating Station, is power generation plants cannot be built overnight.

A vailability of land, an educated work force and affordability of power are a few of the issues that can make or break an economic development deal.

Since South Carolina currently has the 19th lowest retail price for electricity in the nation, access to that affordable and reliable power has been a significant part of the state’s economic development success.

Part of keeping energy costs low has been South Carolina’s cooperative utility system. It was born in the late 1930s and early 1940s because investor-owned utilities didn’t see profit in serving widely dispersed rural customers.

At the time, only 2% of South Carolinians were served by investor-owned utilities, said Ron Calcaterra, president and CEO of the Central Electric Power Cooperative, which in partnership with Santee Cooper serves as the conduit for the power provided by the state’s 20 electric distribution cooperatives to more than 1.5 million customers in the state’s 46 counties.

Today the cooperative serves approximately 70% of the land area of the state, purchasing 95% of its power from Santee Cooper and the remainder from other utilities.

There are currently two customer-owned generation and transmission cooperatives—Central Electric Power Cooperative and Saluda River Electric Cooperative—and 20 distribution cooperatives that serve a region that is projected to experience double-digit growth over the next 25 years.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2030, 40% of the U.S. population will live in the Southeast. Demand for electricity in the region is expected to rise by 30%.

In South Carolina, the population is expected to increase from its current 4.3 million to 5 million residents by 2025.

“We’re seeing growth in the range of 3 percent to 4 percent a year, significantly higher than the 1.35 percent to 2 percent growth the United States as a whole is experiencing,” said Calcaterra, who notes that the present reliance on coal to generate electricity helps keep rates down. He estimates that the state burns one pound of coal for every additional kilowatt of power.

“That’s why we work so closely with Santee Cooper,” Calcaterra added. “We want to take advantage of economies of scale.”

It’s also why CEPC and Santee Cooper both have been promoting energy efficiency so strongly. As part of their 2006 program, the state’s cooperatives distributed 50,000 energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs to businesses, potentially saving enough energy to power 200 homes.