The Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) is an electric distribution cooperative

Utility cooperative

A utility cooperative is a type of cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications to its members...

 which is headquartered in Hughesville, Maryland

Hughesville, Maryland

Hughesville is a census-designated place in Charles County, Maryland, United States. The population was 1,537 at the 2000 census. Truman's Place was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.-Geography:...

. SMECO serves approximately 144,000 customers in Calvert

Calvert County, Maryland

Calvert County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland. It occupies the Calvert Peninsula which is bordered on the east by the Chesapeake Bay and on the west by the Patuxent River. Calvert County is part of the Southern Maryland region. Calvert County's residents are among the highest...

, Charles

Charles County, Maryland

Charles County is a county in the south central portion of the U.S. state of Maryland.As of 2010, the population was 146,551. Its county seat is La Plata. This county was named for Charles Calvert , third Baron Baltimore....

, Prince George's

Prince George's County, Maryland

Prince George's County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland, immediately north, east, and south of Washington, DC. As of 2010, it has a population of 863,420 and is the wealthiest African-American majority county in the nation....

, and St. Mary's counties of southern Maryland

Southern Maryland

Southern Maryland in popular usage is composed of the state's southernmost counties on the "Western Shore" of the Chesapeake Bay. This region includes all of Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties and sometimes the southern portions of Anne Arundel and Prince George's counties.- History...

. Under its rules as a nonprofit

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 cooperative

Cooperative

A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

, 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

Chalk Point Generating Station

The Chalk Point Generating Station is a 2,647-MWe electricity-generating plant owned by GenOn which is located near the tiny incorporated town of Eagle Harbor, Maryland, United States, on the Patuxent River.-Individual Units:...

 which, by an agreement until 2015, is operated and maintained by Mirant

Mirant

Mirant Corporation, an Atlanta-based energy company, produces and sells electricity in the United States. The company was spun off from its former parent, Southern Company, on April 2, 2001...

.

History

In 1937 two committees of citizens from three counties which were seeking aid to construct a local rural electric distribution

Electricity distribution

File:Electricity grid simple- North America.svg|thumb|380px|right|Simplified diagram of AC electricity distribution from generation stations to consumers...

 system under the New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

's Rural Electrictrification Administration

Rural Utilities Service

is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture , one of the federal executive departments of the United States government charged with providing public utilities to rural areas in the United States via public-private partnerships...

 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

Maryland Electric Deregulation

Maryland Electric Deregulation is the result of a bill passed in 1999 by the Maryland General Assembly. This bill changed the entire face of the Maryland utility industry.The past several years have seen a flurry of changes in the energy industry in Maryland...

legislation enacted in 1999.
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.