Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Greenville is the seat of Greenville County, in upstate South Carolina, United States. One of the principal cities of the Greenville-Mauldin-Easley Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), it had a population of 56,006 at the 2000 census. The metropolitan area had an estimated population of 601,986 in 2006. Greenville is the largest city of the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson Combined Statistical Area (CSA) which in 2006 had an estimated population of 1,203,795. The CSA, an 8-county region of northwestern South Carolina, is known as "The Upstate. " Greenville is located approximately halfway between Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina along Interstate 85, and its metropolitan area also includes Interstates 185 and 385.