Southern Maryland Elec Coop Inc electricity rates

It serves 158,375 residential customers in Maryland. At 14.84¢ per kilowatt-hour it is one of the cheaper places to buy electricity in Maryland, 31.8% under the statewide average of 21.77¢.

Its customers use more electricity than the national norm, 1,146 kilowatt-hours a month against 871, which amplifies whatever the rate does.

Owned by the customers it serves, with directors elected by members. Co-ops are frequently outside state rate regulation. That matters because a bill is not only the cost of generating electricity: it also carries the cost of the network, and who owns that network changes how it is paid for.

In 2024 the average Southern Maryland Elec Coop Inc customer went 146 minutes without electricity across 1.31 interruptions. The median across the 941 utilities that report this is 185 minutes.

That is better than the typical American utility, though the figure includes major storm days and can move sharply from one year to the next.

Southern Maryland Elec Coop Inc offers time-of-use pricing to residential customers. 1,360 households were enrolled, about 0.9% of its residential base.

These plans are opt-in almost everywhere. They reward households that can move laundry, dishwashing, water heating or electric vehicle charging out of the late-afternoon peak, and they cost more than the standard rate for households that cannot. How to tell which group you are in.

8,992 residential customers had net-metered solar in 2024, totalling 82.78 megawatts. That works out to 56.8 installations per thousand customers, against a median of 8 across the utilities reporting it.

Adoption here is exceptionally high. That usually means some combination of a high retail rate worth displacing, strong sunshine and favourable export rules, and it tends to bring its own regulatory argument about who covers the fixed cost of the network. What exports are actually worth.