COLUMBUS, Ohio — Although AEP Ohio made the correct decision last summer to cut power to hundreds of thousands of people following severe storms and an intense heatwave, the company should have communicated with its customers better, according to a review from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
A line of storms moved through Ohio on June 13, causing significant damage to the electric grid that caused thousands of outages across the state. The following day, high temperatures in the area made the situation worse, putting additional stress on the rest of the system.
Between 1:45 p.m. and 3:04 p.m. on June 14, six transmission lines failed. When they failed, the load on those lines shifted to other lines. The load on those lines began to increase to a point where they were functioning above safe operation conditions, according to the report. Four more lines failed the following morning.
PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, issued load shed requirements to AEP Ohio in affected areas across central Ohio.
Between June 13 and 19, AEP Ohio reported approximately 606,000 customers lost power at some point. At the peak of the outages around 9 p.m. on June 14, around 239,000 customers were without power.
PUCO believes that the heatwave alone would not have caused any outages, and that it was only because of the damage caused by the storm that load shedding was necessary.
AEP Ohio faced criticism amid the outages over the lack of communication between the company and its customers. PUCO agrees.
"AEP Ohio needs to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of its communication with its customers. Outages can cause major disruptions to the lives of Ohioans. Although outages are not always preventable, customers can better deal with the problems associated with outages if they have accurate and timely information from the utility to rely on when making decisions," PUCO wrote in the report.
PUCO also states AEP Ohio needs to reevaluate its vegetation control plan. The report says although the company adhered to its plan, there is room for improvement because most of the outages were "ultimately caused by vegetation coming into contact with the power lines.
To read the full report, click here.
AEP released a statement following the release of the report:
“Every employee at AEP Ohio understands the importance of providing reliable electric service to our customers. The PUCO staff report confirms what we learned through our own review of the June 13-15 outages. Severe storms caused extensive damage to our electric transmission system and the extreme heat that followed caused several lines to overload. This required us to take emergency forced outages to protect the power grid, which included taking power lines that fed parts of Columbus out of service.
Our response over the last few months has been to more aggressively trim trees, do more inspections of our electric lines using advanced imaging technology, and meet with members of the most impacted communities to understand how we can better meet their expectations of us. We have trimmed back hundreds of miles of vegetation, fixed any damage or hazards we discovered, and are developing stronger relationships our community partners. We appreciate the thoroughness of the PUCO staff and will continue to work with them to further improve our emergency response processes for customer communication.
We understand the significant impact of power outages for our customers and are committed to preparing for and responding to future severe weather events in a proactive and diligent manner.”
Merrilee Embs with the Ohio Consumers' Counsel also released a statement:
“The first response to AEP’s June outages needed to be protecting the safety of the public and utility workers. But after that there needed to be a full investigation by the PUCO, with involvement of the public and their advocates including the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. That public process we called for has not happened despite the motion for an investigation that we, the Poverty Law Center and Pro Seniors filed at the PUCO in July. Energy justice for hundreds of thousands of AEP consumers who lost their electricity should be served with a process that is transparent and inclusive of the public and their representatives. While we appreciate today’s PUCO report, it begs questions including why there would be outages from electric wires damaged by trees considering the money that AEP charges consumers for tree-trimming.”
