HARVEST MONEY IN TREE TRIMMING/SAVINGS AND JOINT USE

Tree trimming and vegetation management.
Every electric utility manager agrees: it’s a huge expense and, in general, a royal pain. However, by outsourcing this vital aspect of line maintenance to AEP, several utilities have cut their forestry costs by 20 to 30 percent a year. And yours can too!

Because of AEP’s size and volume-purchasing power, the company negotiates highly favorable contracts with tree trimming, forestry contractors and other material suppliers. As a result, AEP can pass along some significant savings to you.

Since 1997 AEP has been managing the forestry program for municipal systems and co-ops throughout Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

According to Rick Rose, director of the Hillsdale (Michigan) Board of Public Utilities, “Tree trimming is so critical to reliability. Since AEP has handled the program, our reliability has improved. The excellent tree trimming has allowed us to get people back in service more quickly than before. Since outsourcing to AEP, we get all of our trimming done and we don’t have to worry about it. Turning over our forestry program to AEP has been great!”

In addition, for some utilities AEP has performed joint-use consulting, pole inventory work and tagging, helping electric companies generate revenues from the attaching telephone and cable companies. “Many companies have not embarked on efforts to charge other parties for use of their poles,” said AEP’s Marc Ayle. “We have the resources to manage this process for them and help them tap into new income streams.”

ENGINEERING, PROCUREMENT AND CONSTRUCTION:
ALL OR A LA CARTE

“Would you like fries with that?”

If you’re like most customers, the answer is, “Not always.”

You may want AEP to design and build your entire transmission upgrade, including substations, transmission and distribution lines. Or you might select AEP Outsource Solutions for certain phases of the overall project. Either way, you’ll be able to pick and choose from an extensive menu of services.

When it comes to engineering, procurement and construction jobs, AEP provides the level of service you want -- whether the order involves construction of a major 765 kV line and substation or a relatively small service interconnection.

For example, when Midwest Electric Inc. in Ohio upgraded its system to serve the area’s growing demand, co-op management chose AEP to handle the 2.5-mile 69 kV line needed to connect a new substation to AEP’s transmission system.

AEP managed the $180,000 project from soup to nuts -- including surveying, engineering, material procurement and construction -- completing the job on budget, and ahead of schedule.

“AEP completed the project in a timely fashion at a great cost,” said Paul Rogers, engineering and operations manager for the electric cooperative that serves 9,700 homes, farms and businesses in seven western Ohio counties. “I had worked with AEP on distribution projects before, and based on my experience on this transmission interconnection, I’d consider AEP again -- for small or larger jobs.”

AEP WORKS WITH PONCA CITY, OKLAHOMA
TO UPGRADE SUBSTATION PROTECTION

Ponca City Energy, the municipal electric distribution system for Ponca City, Oklahoma, was looking for an electrical consultant in 2002 to assist in upgrading the city’s substation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.

American Electric Power filled the bill.

With hundreds of transmission and distribution stations throughout 11 states and 277 high voltage interconnections with other utilities, AEP has vast experience with station hardware, software and protection and control systems.

To help Ponca City implement a new SCADA system, AEP conducted a thorough inventory and inspection of the city’s wiring diagrams, data points, schematics and station equipment. AEP developed schematics and implementation drawings for all control and metering devices to overlay the city’s existing station drawings. An itemized list of all materials needed for each of the city’s eight substations was prepared. SCADA systems include software that monitors metering and status information about a power system and controls power system devices through programmable logic devices and data servers.

Representing AEP was Larry Rackliff, a transmission services protection and control electrician in the company’s Bartlesville, Oklahoma, substation office.

“Larry updated our system wiring and circuit diagrams to accommodate the SCADA system,” said Steve Sullivan, operations engineer for Ponca City Energy. “He was very professional, organized and able to anticipate what the job would require. We accomplished the work on time, and it was completely successful.”