Appalachian Power plans to spend $135 million over three years on electric-grid upgrades to improve service reliability, which the utility said represents the first phase of a larger grid transformation process.
The company, which has about 540,000 customers in Western Virginia, said Wednesday it is asking state regulators for permission to carry out the plan.
Appalachian said it will submit a separate request late next year to charge customers for costs related to the project. Because of that, its petition to regulators doesn’t specify how the project would impact the average customer’s monthly bill.
“These investments will further reduce power outages and interruptions for customers while also making the grid more secure and resilient,” Appalachian Power President and COO Aaron Walker said in a news release.
The added reliability brought by the $135 million investment will save customers $499 million over 15 years, Appalachian’s director of reliability and grid modernization, Jeffrey Maynor, said in the utility’s petition.
Part of the plan’s first phase calls for adding more distribution automation circuit reconfiguration, or DACR, technology, which can detect power outages and automatically reroute electricity within seconds. It also helps repair crews more quickly locate the sources of outages, the utility said.
Since 2018, Appalachian has installed DACR technology on nearly 200 circuits throughout its service territory in Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. When adding the technology, the company looks for circuits that are able to handle the extra load if electricity is rerouted to them while also prioritizing those that can most improve reliability, said Appalachian Power spokesperson George Porter.
Another part of this first phase would be building new substations and upgrading components such as transformers and poles, which Appalachian said will minimize the impacts of major storms and other weather events.
The grid transformation plan consists of 38 individual projects in Virginia, including in Abingdon, Bluefield, Damascus, Franklin County, Grayson County, Washington County and Wythe County, according to the utility’s petition.
A battery energy storage system was previously slated to be built on two sites in Grayson and Smyth counties to serve customers on the Glade-Whitetop circuit there, which is among those most prone to outages.
Appalachian spokesperson Ashley Workman said last month that the company was canceling the battery storage project and instead would focus on relocating power lines and adding the new grid technology.
Much of Appalachian Power’s territory is rural and mountainous with dense vegetation, which requires “significant resources” to maintain and repair service, Maynor said.
Adding more automation and interconnected technology will reduce the number of customers who experience outages, he said.
“As part of the Plan, APCo has prioritized investments on worst-performing circuits, poor performing circuits, and circuit improvements that will provide the most reliability benefit to customers,” Maynor said.
Besides improving reliability, the investment will better prepare the grid for future advanced technologies such as battery energy storage systems, he said.
It also will help the utility recover more quickly from any potential cybersecurity or physical security incidents, Maynor said.
If the State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in Virginia, approves Appalachian’s grid transformation plan, the company would begin implementing it next year.
Appalachian’s petition now joins others pending before the SCC. In recent months, the utility has asked to recover costs related to renewable energy and environmental compliance, to continue evaluating a Campbell County site for a potential small modular nuclear reactor and to issue bonds to cover costs related to storm damages and two coal-fired power plants.
