CHARLESTON, W.Va., February 2, 2011 – Appalachian Power sent more than 100 employees and another 57 contract workers to Ohio to help with service restoration from a damaging ice and snow storm there. Line workers make up about two-thirds of the group, and roughly a third are damage assessment specialists. Workers represent service centers from across the company’s Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia territory.

            “Many of the workers who helped us restore power here after last week’s storm came from Ohio, and this week we’re sending employees from our area north to help there,” said Phil Wright, Appalachian Power’s vice president of distribution operations. “We’re also keeping enough employees and contractors on hand to deal with weather-related outages that may arise here.”

            Appalachian Power has almost 1 million customers in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee (as AEP Appalachian Power). It is a unit of American Electric Power, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, which delivers electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning nearly 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the U.S. AEP also owns the nation’s largest electricity transmission system, a nearly 39,000-mile network that includes more 765 kilovolt extra-high voltage transmission lines than all other U.S. transmission systems combined. 
 
                                                           ###