FRANKFORT, KY – Kentucky Power line crews made steady progress today restoring power to thousands of customers who lost electricity service following Thursday night’s severe storms. At the height of the outages last night, more than 15,500 Kentucky Power customers lost power after high winds knocked down power lines, broke utility poles and downed trees and tree limbs across power lines.
 
At this hour, approximately 6,300 customers throughout the company’s 20-county service territory remain without power.
 
After isolating and repairing downed power lines, company officials remind residents of Eastern Kentucky to never approach downed power lines. No matter how harmless a downed wire may appear it should be considered energized and dangerous. Report all downed power lines to Kentucky Power at (800) 572-1113 or notify local emergency or law enforcement officials immediately. Never approach or touch anything that comes in contact with a downed power line.
 
As of 3 p.m. today, the company reported the following outage numbers.
 
Service Area                  Number of Customers    Est. Restoration
Ashland                                      5,654                        midnight Saturday
Hazard                                            52                            6 p.m. Friday
Paintsville                                        11                            midnight Friday
Pikeville                                        490                            midnight Friday
South Williamson                            69                            midnight Friday
Total                                         6,276
 
Customers and media representatives can track the number of outages in their area by going to www.kentuckypower.com and clicking on "storm & outage center" then "see current outages." The site provides a customer outage count by county.
 
Kentucky Power is an operating unit of American Electric Power and provides electricity to approximately 175,000 customers in all or parts of 20 Eastern Kentucky counties.
 
American Electric Power is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, delivering electricity to more than 5 million customers in 11 states. AEP ranks among the nation’s largest generators of electricity, owning more than 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. AEP’s transmission system directly or indirectly serves about 10 percent of the electricity demand in the Eastern Interconnection, the interconnected transmission system that covers 38 eastern and central U.S. states and eastern Canada, and approximately 11 percent of the electricity demand in ERCOT, the transmission system that covers much of Texas. AEP’s utility units operate as AEP Ohio, AEP Texas, Appalachian Power (in Virginia and West Virginia), AEP Appalachian Power (in Tennessee), Indiana Michigan Power, Kentucky Power, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and Southwestern Electric Power Company (in Arkansas, Louisiana and east Texas). AEP’s headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio.

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