Charleston, W.Va., October 31, 2012 –   In less than 48 hours, thousands of Appalachian Power crews and outside workers have restored power to more than 60,000 customers as a result of Monday’s storm. Outages peaked around noon on Tuesday at more than 157,000 customers.

Restoration times have been established for most areas, however these are estimates and could change depending on further assessment of electrical facilities and ongoing inclement weather in some areas:

West Virginia

• Charleston, Cross Lanes, Glasgow, Sissonville, Walgrove and all other areas of Kanawha County should be 90 percent restored by Sunday at midnight.
• Madison and all other areas in Boone County should be 90 percent restored by Sunday at midnight.  
• Milton and surrounding areas of Cabell County should be 90 percent restored by Sunday midnight, except for the Huntington and Wayne areas which should be restored by Friday night.
• Hamlin and all areas of Lincoln County should be 90 percent restored by Friday night.
• Pt. Pleasant (Mason) and Ripley (Jackson) and all surrounding areas should be 90 percent restored by Friday night.
•  Beckley (Raleigh), Bluefield (Mercer) and Hico (Fayette) and all surrounding areas should be 90 percent restored by Friday night.
• Logan (Logan) and Williamson (Mingo) and all surrounding areas should be 90 percent restored by Friday night.                                      

In anticipation of power outages, company officials began preparing for this storm last Friday. “Appalachian’s power outages are part of a national crisis affecting millions of customers up and down the mid-Atlantic coast. Resources have been spread very thin, but fortunately we have been able to secure plenty of crews to get our repairs completed as quickly and safely as possible,” said Phil Wright, vice president of distribution operations. Additional crews were secured from Appalachian’s six sister companies within AEP bringing the total to more than 2,000 working on storm restoration. 

Ongoing inclement weather continues to make damage assessment difficult and is hampering the pace of power restoration.  Appalachian is dealing with significant transmission damage typically assessed by helicopter. However, crews are having to assess damage by 4-wheel-drive and ATV vehicles, and even by foot patrol in the most remote, mountainous regions. Four helicopters are on stand-by waiting to fly as soon as weather conditions approve. In addition, shorter daylight hours mean less time to perform damage assessments and to safely restore power.

A few additional facts as of Wednesday afternoon:

• More than 48 distribution substations were taken out by the storm and 25 remain out of service.
• More than 110 circuit breakers were taken out of service due to the storm and all but about 50 have been restored.
• Approximately 44 transmission lines were affected by storm and ten have been repaired.
• Appalachian Power also serves Virginia and Tennessee where an additional 25,000 customers were affected by Hurricane Sandy. All but 9,000 have been restored in those states.

Appalachian Power has 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

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