CHARLESTON, W.Va., January 25, 2011 – Appalachian Power is bringing more than 350 workers from outside the company’s service area into southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia in anticipation of a winter storm that has the potential to cause major power outages. The workers will assist locally-based Appalachian Power employees should the storm cause widespread damage to electrical facilities.
            The latest weather information suggests that on Wednesday as much as eight inches of heavy, wet snow may fall across the coalfield regions of southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia, in a geographic range from the Virginia-Tennessee border northeast through the Bluefield, Beckley and Greenbrier County areas of West Virginia.
            “We do expect outages associated with this storm, so in advance of the storm we are placing resources in the areas most likely to be affected,” said Phil Wright, Appalachian Power’s vice president of distribution operations.
            More than 50 damage assessment specialists along with 322 company and contract line workers are moving into position this evening and will be immediately ready to assist with service restoration. The workers will locate in the Charleston, Beckley and Princeton areas in West Virginia and in Wytheville, Virginia.
            Appalachian Power has almost 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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