AEP Ohio’s Year-Round Readiness: Preparing & Responding to Better Serve You

Natural disasters. Vehicle accidents. Extreme hot and cold weather. There are a number of causes outside our control that can impact the flow of power. That’s why we focus on what we can control — proactively improving our equipment, monitoring potential threats and preparing our team to respond around the clock to protect the electric grid.  

Josh McQueen serves as AEP Ohio’s emergency preparedness manager, ensuring our team and the grid are ready. We recently sat down with Josh to learn more about his role and how it ultimately serves you, our customer.

Tell us more about your role as AEP Ohio’s emergency preparedness manager and the primary risks you prepare for.

Planning and forward-thinking are key in my role to ensure customers have the reliable power they expect from us. While our team constantly monitors potential threats to our electric equipment, we also proactively work with community partners, like the Ohio and Franklin County Emergency Management Agencies, to coordinate efforts in the event of an emergency.

We focus on anything that could increase the potential for widespread power outages. As you can imagine, storms and extreme weather keep us busy. We also focus on high-traffic events, like the Canton Hall of Fame parade and the Memorial Tournament hosted at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. This means strategically positioning crews so they can respond to outages as quickly as possible without the added worry of traffic or road conditions.

Bottom line, it’s my job to make sure the AEP Ohio team is ready for anything that could disrupt electric service and impact our customers. And if there’s an outage, my focus shifts to helping us activate and respond to restore power safely, and as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Additional Reading: How we prepared for the solar eclipse. 

We’re seeing more extreme weather patterns recently. How does AEP Ohio prepare for these events to keep power on?

Our crews don’t wait until severe weather strikes; we work year-round to maintain and update the electric equipment that serves our customers. While our equipment is designed to operate in extreme weather, there are factors that are difficult to control that can have an impact such as lightning, trees that bring down our lines and equipment from outside our right-of-way and vehicle accidents due to weather conditions. Ensuring our equipment is as reliable and resilient as possible means:

• Conducting proactive inspections to help us find and fix issues before they cause an outage
• Trimming and removing trees away from our power lines and equipment 
• Replacing and upgrading aging equipment
• Installing and utilizing smart technology that provides us with real-time insights into the health of the grid, allowing us to pinpoint and address issues faster

We also stay in daily contact with PJM, our regional transmission organization, to monitor the flow of electricity. PJM coordinates the grid capacity for 13 states and the District of Columbia, ensuring enough power is available to meet anticipated demand. If they foresee challenges based on severe storms or extreme temperatures, they could require AEP Ohio and other utilities to take certain actions to navigate the situation.

Additional Reading: How we work with PJM. 

You mentioned that smart technology is helping make the grid more reliable and resilient. How does AEP Ohio use it to speed up restoration work after storms and other outages?

Our system analysts receive data from several different types of smart technology, such as smart meters, line sensors, and other smart devices installed across our service territory. This helps them spot trends, target problems in real-time, and respond to issues before they lead to outages that impact customers. 

We also use power rerouting technology, or Distribution Automation Circuit Reconfiguration (DACR), to detect a power outage and automatically reroute power within minutes – minimizing the number of people impacted while repairs are made. It also helps crews locate the issue so they can fix it faster. 

And when outages do occur where rerouting isn’t possible, we can deploy camera-equipped drones to identify problems faster than our crews can observe on foot, especially in challenging terrain that bucket trucks can’t access. Our newest drones have high-resolution and infrared cameras — plus video-streaming capability — so trained technicians can more closely investigate our equipment. 

Thanks to these evolving technologies, we’re able to monitor the grid more efficiently, prevent outages before they impact customers and restore power quicker if an outage occurs.

Additional Reading: How smart technology helps keep the power on and restore it faster. 

How have past weather events shaped how AEP Ohio responds?

We’re always looking at better ways to serve our customers. For example, after the Central Ohio emergency outages in June of 2022, we’ve spent a lot of time listening to feedback from our customers and community leaders and reflecting on what we can do better. 

We’ve taken that feedback to heart, increasing our communication with customers and local communities. Our team regularly participates in events to connect more directly with our communities — sharing information on preparedness and how to be safe around electricity. Customers may have also noticed an uptick in the number of emails, texts and social media posts ahead of storms and other events that could impact them. We’re focused on proactively sharing as much real-time information as possible to help customers prepare, along with regular updates on what to expect during outage restoration efforts.

We’re continuing to strengthen relationships with community partners and leaders — having more regular meetings and touchpoints to ensure we operate in lockstep when time is of the essence. 

We work hard every day to take steps to improve how we provide reliable electric service to customers.

How is AEP Ohio protecting the grid?

We don’t discuss specific details to best protect our system. Customers can be assured the security of our people, equipment and facilities is our top priority, 24/7/365. Our efforts are part of a coordinated strategy shared by utilities across the country that work together with law enforcement and other government agencies to share information and stop threats as they arise.

What do you want customers to know about AEP Ohio’s commitment to keeping the power on?

Our crews work hard every day to provide safe, reliable power. We know we have more work to do and are committed to delivering the best service possible to our customers. Our expectation is your expectation — and that is to deliver perfect power. 

From how we maintain the grid to exploring the latest technologies to speed up power restoration, we’re continually planning for different scenarios and always looking for ways to strengthen the essential service we provide to customers’ homes and businesses.

Additional Reading: How you can prepare for the unexpected, too.