AEP to meet new Ohio standards to lessen outages

OHIO - American Electric Power has reached an agreement with Ohio regulators to meet new standards aimed at achieving shorter and fewer outages.

AEP and other utilities in Ohio struggled with outages that lasted for days — sometimes a week or longer — after remnants of Hurricane Ike battered the state in September 2008. The winds knocked out electrical service to more than 2 million Ohio utility customers.

The standards adopted by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio are aimed at reducing the average duration of a power failure by about a half-hour or more and the frequency of AEP's outages.

Ohio regulators have similar deals with Duke Energy and Dayton Power & Light.

Ohio's Deputy Consumers' Counsel Bruce Weston said in a statement that the utilities' agreements should mean fewer electricity outages for shorter periods.

Utilities failing to meet their standards must submit action plans and could be fined for subsequent violations, PUCO spokeswoman Shan Eiselstein said. She said that the goal is to make sure consumers have access to reliable service.

AEP Ohio spokeswoman Terri Flora says the utility already is meeting stricter standards and expects a more aggressive tree-trimming program and more sophisticated meters that alert the company automatically when a customer loses power to help in meeting those standards.