As AEP Ohio continues to restore power, calls grow for an investigation into power outage

As American Electric Power Ohio works to restore power to Greater Columbus after this week's storms, calls are growing for an investigation into why the company chose to turn off power to certain neighborhoods and the impact those decisions had on the state's manufacturers.

"Customers deserve to know the cause for the outages, as well as steps that could have been taken to prevent intentional load shedding," Ryan Augsburger, president of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association, said in a statement. "Customers also deserve insight into how billions of dollars of ratepayer funds have been spent to improve grid resiliency so we can be assured the system is working properly.”

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The Columbus branch of the NAACP said it, too, had questions about the decisions that were made to shut off power in certain areas but others.

"The majority of areas without electric were in the urban community, which is indication there may be some biases," the NAACP said in a statement.

AEP Ohio has said that while AEP manually did shut off power to those areas, the locations were dictated by where lines were overloaded, not by any preference for neighborhood, as many have said on social media.

"There's no tie whatsoever to customers, or what type of customers," Jon Williams, AEP Ohio's managing director of customer experience, said Wednesday. "We're not picking and choosing locations."

He and other AEP executives blamed storms from Monday night into Tuesday morning that wreaked havoc with AEP's transmission system followed by the hottest temperatures of the year.

Jenifer French, the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said several transmission lines, which carry large loads of power from generating sources to the smaller distribution lines and substations, were knocked out of service because of the storms, and that put increased stress on the transmission lines that remained.

The result was that PJM Interconnection, which oversees the flow of electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, including all of Ohio, ordered AEP to decrease electricity demand on some parts of the stressed system in Greater Columbus. The decision is something that PJM does as a last resort.

That led AEP to shut down power to parts of its service territory in Greater Columbus and other parts of Ohio.

Franklin County's Democratic state representatives sent a letter to Ohio AEP President and Chief Operating Officer Marc Reitter on Thursday demanding more information on the process used by AEP to determine where power was turned off, what the power company do to make up for the losses suffered by consumers and what it will do to make sure this doesn't happen again.

"We find it troubling that AEP has no issue with customer notifications when bills are due, but when customers are faced with historic heat, limited resources and great needs, there seems to be limited or no communication about planned outages that impact the health, safety and welfare of customers," said the letter signed by nine legislators.

Manufacturers hurt by outages 

While residential customers baked in the heat, many manufacturers without power were forced to shut down operations, Augsburger said.

Augsburger said area manufacturers such as Plaskolite, a manufacturer of acrylic sheet, polycarbonate sheet, acrylic polymers, and athletic equipment company Rogue Fitness were forced to temporarily halt operations as a result of AEP Ohio's intentional load reductions.

"When a manufacturer is down, they bare additional lost production expense — and may incur ruined product expense," he said in a statement. "Manufacturers expect a full and publicly transparent review of the grid failures this week by the grid operator, PJM Interconnection, as well as the state regulator (PUCO)."

AEP, one of the nation's largest power generators, said last year that it plans to invest $38 billion by 2026 throughout its network of utilities that go from Michigan to Texas with an emphasis on transmission, distribution and renewable energy.

A year ago, AEP struck a new rate system for customers in Ohio meant to improve reliability while helping power the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. In 2019, AEP submitted a grid modernization effort — including smart meters and improved circuits along its distribution system — to the more rural parts of its Ohio service territory.

Smart meters, among other things, provide more detailed information about electricity use and have the ability to detect and report outage information to AEP Ohio so crews can restore power faster.

Augsburger said AEP Ohio's manufacturing customers have paying higher rates for electricity for investments in transmissions and distribution along with smart grid features intended to improve the resiliency of the grid and avoid the kind of situation that happened this week with AEP intentionally shutting off power to neighborhoods, a process called load shedding.

"Intentional load shedding should be a last resort, as it puts lives at risk and significantly disrupts our economy," he said. "This week's extreme weather was predictable, and the grid failures may have been preventable."

The Ohio Consumers' Counsel also has called for an investigation of AEP and the outages.

“Job-one is to restore power safely and ASAP for thousands of Ohio families," Merrilee Embs, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. "Then there should be a PUCO investigation of this week’s crisis to learn what and why things happened and the lessons from it."

When will the power come back for everyone?

By Thursday afternoon, about 1,400 customers in Franklin County still were without power, according to power outage maps of the region.

The number fluctuated throughout the day and, at one point, AEP warned of a new outage involving more than 4,000 customers in New Albany.

"Crews are continuing to work to restore power to our Clintonville customers​," AEP Ohio tweeted Thursday. "Additionally, customers in New Albany are experiencing a new outage that's being investigated by crews. We will continue to monitor system performance throughout the day and provide updates."

At the peak, about a quarter million AEP customers were without power as of Tuesday night, according to AEP. Of that number, 169,000 were in the Columbus area.

While power is largely back on in Columbus, thousands of customers remained without power in other parts of the state, including big chunks of Morrow, Knox, Holmes, Coshocton and Ashland counties in the northeast part of the state and in Ross and Pike counties in southern Ohio.

AEP's latest outage map showed most customers in other parts of the state should have gotten power back at some point Thursday.

The outage comes as the region is sweltering under the hottest temperatures of 2022, pushing up demand for electricity as AEP continues to restore service. The company is urging customers to raise the thermostat a few degrees, wait to do laundry, turn off unnecessary appliances and close the curtains to curtail demand for power.

nullmawilliams@dispatch.co

@BizMarkWilliams

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus power outages: Consumer, manufacturers call for investigation