A South Carolina utility has begun the state's largest solar power installation, a 1,300 photovoltaic panel project to cover an assortment of buildings in Myrtle Beach, according to published reports.

The Service Center, Warehouse and Technical Services will be covered by the panels, which also will be installed on the ground. The panels' solar capacity is 311 kilowatts.

"It's a good opportunity for us to demonstrate on a fairly large scale the opportunities and some of the limitations of solar energy," Mollie Gore, a spokeswoman for Santee Cooper of Moncks Corner, told the Sun News.

All generated power will feed directly into the grid and will be made available to all customers, she said.

The project is funded by $500,000 from Santee Cooper's Green Power revenues and a South Carolina Energy Office grant totaling $475,000. Other costs were covered by the utility's general fund account.

Myrtle Beach was selected for thanks to ample space for new solar installations and the orientation of its structures in a north-south fashion, which enables them to maximize the amount of solar rays to capture.