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Integrated Resource Plan, 2024–2043

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Coop­er­a­tives in South Car­oli­na pur­chase a vari­ety of resources to ensure your pow­er is reli­able and afford­able. Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers con­sume ener­gy from a vari­ety of ener­gy sources, all of which are shown in the Inte­grat­ed Resource Plan PDF. It also looks at how we han­dle ener­gy con­sump­tion today, how we’ll han­dle it in the future, how we plan for increased usage, and how we plan to tack­le things such as car­bon emis­sions.

Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive, Inc. (Cen­tral) is a whole­sale elec­tric gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion coop­er­a­tive (G&T) head­quar­tered in Colum­bia, South Car­oli­na. Cen­tral is owned by the 20 inde­pen­dent, consumer-owned South Car­oli­na dis­tri­b­u­tion elec­tric coop­er­a­tives. They are the group that spear­head­ed this report and ini­tia­tive.

Below is a small snap­shot of the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the full plan.

In accor­dance with the amend­ment of The South Car­oli­na Code of Laws, 1976, sec­tion 58–37-40 to include elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive Inc. (Cen­tral) is sub­mit­ting its Inte­grat­ed Resource Plan to the South Car­oli­na State Ener­gy Office on behalf of itself and the 20 South Car­oli­na dis­tri­b­u­tion elec­tric coop­er­a­tives.

The IRP’s devel­op­ment includ­ed a plan­ning process that was begun in 2022. Cen­tral will com­plete this process every three years, with a review and update in the off years.

Integrated Resource Plan logos

Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, Inc. (Coastal) is a not-for-prof­it, mem­ber-owned cor­po­ra­tion head­quar­tered in Wal­ter­boro, South Car­oli­na that was cre­at­ed in 1940 to pro­vide elec­tric ser­vice to its mem­ber-own­ers. Coastal cur­rent­ly serves approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 mem­ber-own­ers who reside in Col­leton, Bam­berg, and Dorch­ester coun­ties. Coastal owns and main­tains 1,758 miles of dis­tri­b­u­tion lines to serve its mem­ber-own­ers. Coastal’s mis­sion is to improve the qual­i­ty of life of our mem­bers by pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty elec­tric ser­vices at com­pet­i­tive costs with a com­mit­ment to mem­ber sat­is­fac­tion.

Coastal and the oth­er 19 South Car­oli­na mem­ber coop­er­a­tives devel­oped this Inte­grat­ed Resource Plan (IRP) through their whole­sale pow­er provider, Cen­tral Elec­tric Pow­er Coop­er­a­tive Inc. (Cen­tral). The IRP is writ­ten from the Cen­tral per­spec­tive and will detail Cen­tral and its mem­ber coop­er­a­tives’ plan to meet fore­cast­ed ener­gy con­sump­tion and peak demand through­out the defined plan­ning peri­od of the IRP.

Carbon Policy

Nation­al reg­u­la­tion of car­bon emis­sions in the Unit­ed States has been shift­ing con­stant­ly over the past decade due to court deci­sions and chang­ing pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions. The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion pro­posed the Clean Pow­er Plan, which was stayed by the Supreme Court before being repealed by the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion replaced the Clean Pow­er Plan with the Afford­able Clean Ener­gy rule, which has also been repealed. Most recent­ly, the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion pro­posed new reg­u­la­tions using Sec­tion 111 of the Clean Air Act to reduce car­bon emis­sions by the pow­er sec­tor. The pro­posed Sec­tion 111 rules seek to require own­ers of large tra­di­tion­al fos­sil burn­ing units to adopt a Best Sys­tem of Emis­sions Reduc­tion (BSER), which the EPA defines as car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion or burn­ing clean hydro­gen. Units that can­not or will not adopt the BSER must be retired.

South Car­oli­na does not have a state pol­i­cy lim­it­ing or oth­er­wise plac­ing a price on car­bon emis­sions from pow­er gen­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, the poten­tial remains for enact­ment of such a pol­i­cy at the nation­al or state lev­el over the study peri­od.

To account for this, a car­bon tax sen­si­tiv­i­ty was cre­at­ed. The car­bon tax sen­si­tiv­i­ty assumed the imple­men­ta­tion of a car­bon tax begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1, 2024. This tax was set at less than $20 per ton and esca­lates annu­al­ly over the fore­cast peri­od,

Community Solar

Com­mu­ni­ty Solar Central’s board autho­rized the con­struc­tion for up to 5 MW (AC) of com­mu­ni­ty solar avail­able to all of Central’s mem­ber-coop­er­a­tives. Con­struc­tion on these sites began in 2016, and they are a mix­ture of ground-mount and canopy con­fig­u­ra­tions. These sites are either owned by Central’s mem­ber-coop­er­a­tives or Cen­tral has PPAs with third par­ty solar devel­op­ers to pur­chase the ener­gy out­put.

Cur­rent­ly, 18 mem­ber-coop­er­a­tives have access to com­mu­ni­ty solar.

Com­mu­ni­ty solar allows Central’s mem­ber-coop­er­a­tives to offer their mem­ber-own­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port renew­able gen­er­a­tion devel­op­ment with­out the require­ment to install those resources on their homes or prop­er­ty. Mem­ber-coop­er­a­tives can lease the pan­els to their mem­ber-own­ers. This opens access to solar ener­gy for renters and mobile home­own­ers, who would not be able to access solar ener­gy under a rooftop own­er­ship busi­ness mod­el.

In total, the com­mu­ni­ty solar sites have gen­er­at­ed 42 GWh of ener­gy since 2016, which would equal the pro­duc­tion need­ed to ful­ly sup­ply 36,500 homes. As of the end of 2022, 4.2 MW (AC) has come online.

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