Appalachian Power will soon have a
lot of work happening along the company’s power line right- of-way across
southern West Virginia
“We have in the past used a system
where we look at the circuits most in need of improvement and base our
right-of-way maintenance on that,” said Appalachian Power Communications
Director Jeri Matheney. “With this, every line will be looked at least every
four years from the power plant to the customer.”
The plan is to keep rights-of-way
clear is aimed at improving service, especially during times following storms
like the Derecho and Superstorm Sandy.
“It will improve reliability,” said
Matheney. “It won’t stop all outages, but it will allow us to restore service
faster in many cases.”
The improved service however will come
with a price. Matheney said the estimated cost of the plan is $58 million,
which is $40 million more than the current budget. However, the PSC did
allow the company could bill that cost to customers.
“We’ll spread that out among our
customers,” said Matheney. “No customers will see an increase on that for quite
some time because we’re going to file a general rate case by June 30 and the
commission has almost a year to look at those costs.”
The new program will go into effect
immediately. Matheny said it will take six years to get to all of the
rights-of-way covered the first time and after that they will work on a
four-year rotation.
