Ground-Breaking

A major first for South Carolina turns to trusted names for support.

South Carolina is in the heart of solar country. Its neighbor North Carolina is ranked 10th in the nation for solar jobs (3,100 total) and can power nearly 40,000 homes with solar energy. Georgia to the west has 146 solar companies. In the south, Florida (you know, the Sunshine State) powers more than 20,000 homes with installed solar power.

So why then does South Carolina rank 29th for solar jobs (1,000 total), can only power 400 homes with solar and has a measly 33 solar companies? Some blame the state’s strong support of nuclear power. In fact, South Carolina’s V.C. Summer Nuclear Station is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar expansion, receiving new reactors (two of only four new nuclear reactors being built in the United States in 30 years). Nuclear power supplied more than 57 percent of the state’s electricity generation in 2013 (according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration), so solar isn’t especially attractive right now.

But big players are starting to make that change in South Carolina. This January, a revolutionary solar project was commissioned in Walterboro. Santee Cooper, the state-owned electric utility, built a 3-MW solar farm on an old cotton field as a test bed for understanding how solar fits in with the grid and how to go about building more. Schletter and Array Technologies Inc. were the lucky manufacturers chosen to jump-start South Carolina’s solar construction.

[source: http://solarbuildermag.com/featured/south-carolina-schletter-array-technologies/]