A public utility company is installing South Carolina’s largest-ever solar photovoltaic project at its facility in Myrtle Beach.

Santee Cooper funded the 311-kilowatt Grand Strand Solar Station project with a $475,000 grant from the South Carolina Energy Office and another $500,000 from the company’s Green Power revenues, generated from funds collected from those customers who pay extra on their utility bills to buy green power.

“It’s already the largest in the state,” said Mollie Gore, a Santee Cooper spokeswoman. “We’ve been working on it a couple weeks, and we have about 100 kilowatts up so far.”

South Carolina lags behind much of the country in solar installations.

Gore said the public utility Santee Cooper has been looking for more opportunities to install solar. It already produces about 22 megawatts of clean energy using landfill biomass production, she said.

But the company has only a handful of solar projects. There are about 20 solar demonstration sites at middle schools throughout the state, though none of them feed into the grid. There are also two 20-kilowatt solar installations at universities in South Carolina.

But this is the first major installation in the state.

Most of the 1,300 solar panels will be installed on the roof of a warehouse in Myrtle Beach.

They are rated to withstand hurricane-force winds.

“That’s really important here in South Carolina,” Gore said, “especially since Myrtle Beach is right on the shore.”

The panels will feed power into a transformer there that will be routed to the grid, Gore said.

Another 60 solar panels will be ground-mounted in a landscaped patch of grass in front of the warehouse. Santee Cooper expects to use the ground-mounted panels as an educational tool, inviting students from around the state to visit the site and learn about how solar energy works.

“That’s a nice amenity,” Gore said.

The installation is expected to be finished in March, when Santee Cooper will flip the switch and allow the panels to generate power and feed into the grid.

Because it will be the largest installation in the state, the company will be watching it with interest to see if production goals are being met and if solar could be a realistic option for future power production projects, Gore said.

The Grand Strand Solar Station is expected to generate enough energy to power 30 homes for a year and will increase solar production in the state by 50 percent, according to Santee Cooper’s press release.

Pictured: Lonnie Carter, Santee Cooper president and CEO addresses those gathered shadowed by the 9 solar panels that make up the 20-kilowatt solar array at TCL’s New River Campus. Photo: Jim Huff/Santee Cooper