Appalachian Power Experiences Major Outage in WV in December
February 5, 2010
In December, a power outage effected 223,000 customers during the period of Dec. 19-31, 2009. It was the largest in their 84 years of business. Some customers lost service for 8 days.
AEP officials: Dec. power outage affected 223,000
February 05, 2010 @ 12:00 AM
TOM MILLER
For The Herald-Dispatch
CHARLESTON -- Executives of Appalachian Power Company told members of the West Virginia Legislature on Thursday afternoon that last month's widespread power outages affected more than 233,000 or about 53 percent of their total customer base and that some of them were without electric service from Dec. 19-Dec. 31.
"It was the largest outage in our 84 years of business," said Dana Waldo, president and chief operating officer of the company. "But we think we did an excellent job under the circumstances."
He and other company officials made the report, originally scheduled for the House of Delegates chamber, in a committee room in the East Wing of the State Capitol because House Democrats were having an unusual afternoon caucus in the chamber that lasted well past the 4 p. m. starting time for the hearing.
Delegate David Hall, D-Wyoming, was one of a handful of legislators present and he presided until the late arrival of Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin, D-Mingo. Chafin last month demanded an investigation by the West Virginia Public Service Commission after he received numerous complaints from constituents in his district about the lengthy period before electric service was restored.
Hall, who lives in Oceana, said he was without electric service for eight days but it came back on briefly on Christmas Eve.
"Then, after a brief period, it went off again for another 24 hours and came back on for good on Christmas night," Hall said.
Although most of the people who showed up for the hearing were not legislators, Phil Wright, vice president for distribution at Appalachian Power, said questions would not be accepted from anyone but members of the Legislature at this meeting. He said the PSC has scheduled three public hearings at various locations next month in response to Sen. Chafin's request to take comments from the general public.
Waldo said the fact that the heavy wet snowfall that caused the widespread power outage in southern West Virginia came during the Christmas holidays "just added insult to injury."
Wright said it was two weeks before service was restored to every customer and the repair efforts were focused in southern West Virginia, primarily in Mingo, Logan, Wyoming and McDowell counties. He said Appalachian also had 130,000 customers in neighboring Virginia that lost electric service as well during the heavy snowfall.
A planned video of the repair efforts was abandoned when the computerized equipment failed to work properly. During a slide presentation of some of the photos of the trees that fell across power lines and the repair crews at work, Wright also said the company had 750 employees sleeping on cots in the Logan High School gym during the repair work.
"We had one location where there were 19 separate repairs that had to be made to restore service," he added. "And in one case, we had to completely move the power line for a distance of 1.7 miles, which we were able to accomplish in two days."
