A Guide to North Carolina's Electric Power Providers

A Guide to North Carolina’s Electric Power Providers

ore than 100 separately orga-

nized electric power providers

serve nearly 10 million people

in North Carolina. Each covers a desig-

nated service area, and depending upon

where you live, your electric service

could come from a consumer-owned

electric cooperative, an investor-owned

utility, your city government, a univer-

sity-owned utility or some other utility

operating in the state.

History & Service Areas

In the early days of electrification,

power was only available in larger

communities where power companies

could count on sufficient economic

return. In the 1930s and `’40s, rural

North Carolinians formed coopera-

tives that they could own and manage

themselves to bring electricity to more

sparsely populated regions.

After World War II, growth in North

Carolina’s towns and cities began

spilling over into these formerly rural

areas. In 1965, the North Carolina

Utilities Commission (an agency of

state government formed in 1891)

brought together investor-owned utili-

ties and cooperatives in order to define

and assign service areas.

This division of service areas still

stands today, although with some

modifications. In 2005, state legisla-

tion clarified the procedures by which

cooperatives and municipal electric

systems negotiate their respective ser-

vice areas in relation to one another.

In the summer of 2012, a merger

of the investor-owned utilities Duke

Energy and Progress Energy formed

the largest regulated utility in the

nation. Duke Energy (the official name

of the merged corporations) serves

some 7.4 million electric accounts in

six states, including about 3.3 million

in North Carolina.

Regulation

The North Carolina Utilities

Commission has jurisdiction over the

licensing of new generating plants oper-

ated by all electric power providers and

over the construction of new electric

transmission facilities that are 161 kilo-

volts and above in size. Investor-owned

utilities operate within the jurisdiction

of the commission, which oversees their

rates and service practices. Cooperatives

and municipal electric systems are

regulated by their own local gov-

erning bodies.

Cooperatives pay all the taxes that

investor-owned utilities pay, except

income tax because cooperatives are

not-for-profit businesses.

The North Carolina Rural

Electrification Authority, whose

five members are appointed by the

governor, reviews the cooperatives’

federal loan applications and con-

sumer comments.

Electric cooperatives

■ 26 independent, not-for-profit electric power providers owned

and governed by their local members.

■ Approximately 1 million North Carolina homes, farms and businesses

(approximately 2.5 million people) served by the 26 cooperatives

(also known as electric membership corporations or EMCs). Their

service areas extend to 93 of the state’s 100 counties.

■ 5 co-ops based in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina

serve border areas in North Carolina.

■ 25 co-ops belong to the North Carolina Electric Membership

Corporation, a generation and transmission cooperative that

supplies its members with all or parts of their power needs.

NCEMC’s power mix includes owned assets and purchased

power with more than half of its portfolio coming from nuclear

generation, including shared ownership of Catawba Nuclear

Station in York County, S.C. In addition to this emissions-free

nuclear source, NCEMC’s owned assets include two natural-gas

peak generating plants (Anson and Richmond counties) and two

diesel-powered generating facilities in Buxton and Ocracoke.

NCEMC is also working with many member cooperatives to

facilitate the construction and incorporation of community solar

farms across the state. Additionally, NCEMC is one of the largest

buyers of wholesale electric power in the nation.

■ All 26 N.C. co-ops belong to the North Carolina Association of

Electric Cooperatives, a trade association that performs services

statewide, including publishing Carolina Country.

SERVICE AREAS

Investor-owned electric utilities

Duke Energy Carolinas

■ Headquartered in Charlotte.

■ Serves approximately 2.5 million accounts

in central and western North Carolina and

western South Carolina in a service area of

approximately 24,000 square miles.

Duke Energy Progress

■ Wholly-owned subsidiary of Duke Energy.

■ Serves approximately 1.5 million accounts

in central and eastern North Carolina,

plus an area in and around Asheville and

northeastern South Carolina. The total service

area is approximately 32,000 square miles.

Dominion

■ Headquartered in Richmond, VA.

Operates in northeastern North Carolina

as Dominion North Carolina Power.

■ Serves approximately 120,000

North Carolina accounts.

Municipal & University-owned systems

■ More than 70 municipally-owned electric

systems serve approximately 500,000 North

Carolina households and businesses within

some city and town limits.

■ Several of our state’s universities serve their

campuses with electric facilities that they

own and operate within the municipal electric

system structure.

■ Most of the municipal and university-owned

electric systems are members of ElectriCities,

an umbrella non-profit organization that

provides its member systems services such as

training, member and government relations,

communications and emergency assistance.

■ ElectriCities also provides management

services to two municipal power agencies

that supply wholesale electricity directly to

51 ElectriCities members and indirectly to

another five members. These power agencies

are North Carolina Municipal Power Agency

Number 1, which has partial interest in the

Catawba Nuclear Station, and North Carolina

Eastern Municipal Power Agency.

■ A portion of the electric power for these

municipally-owned systems is purchased

wholesale from investor-owned utilities.

Note: North Carolina law designates service areas, and those areas are displayed as

accurately as possible on this map. However, due to issues of scale, it is impossible to

demonstrate with 100 percent accuracy the sizes of and interplay between them.

KEY

Publicly-owned electric systems

Electric cooperatives

Duke Energy Progress

Duke Energy Carolinas

Dominion

1. Albemarle EMC

2. Blue Ridge Electric

3. Brunswick EMC

4. Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative

5. Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative

6. Central EMC

7. Edgecombe-Martin County EMC

8. EnergyUnited

9. Four County EMC

10. French Broad EMC

11. Halifax EMC

12. Haywood EMC

13. Jones-Onslow EMC

14. Lumbee River EMC

15. Pee Dee EMC

16. Piedmont EMC

17. Pitt & Greene EMC

18. Randolph EMC

19. Roanoke Electric Cooperative

20. Rutherford EMC

21. South River EMC

22. Surry Yadkin EMC

23. Tideland EMC

24. Tri-County EMC

25. Union Power Cooperative

26. Wake EMC

Electric cooperatives