Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401280070
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It also may have given a boost to the electric utility's efforts to gain public support and regulatory approval for a 115-mile, 765-kilovolt power line from Wyoming, W.Va., to Cloverdale.
The lead story in the magazine's January issue was titled: "AEP System faces peak winter demands, constraints in transmission system."
The story appeared well before the cold spell. But it speculated on whether frigid temperatures would create the same kinds of transmission overloads on Apco's power lines in southern West Virginia and in Virginia that the American Electric Power system faced last summer. Apco is AEP's largest operating company.
As it turned out, severe winter weather across the Midwest and the East Coast did produce record loads on Apco's transmission system, as well as those of other regional utilities. Anyone who depends on Apco for power is well aware of that fact, having faced urgent appeals by the company to conserve power lest the whole system blow a mammoth fuse.
Had the editors of Apco's magazine found a crystal ball somewhere, or was it Lady Luck's wand that had fallen out of the sky and into Apco's lap along with the ice and snow?
Despite having to deal with a crisis, Apco got publicity out of the winter-created overload that it couldn't have bought from any public relations firm.
How many home or business owners are going to speak out against the new power line when they're faced with the prospect of no power to run furnaces or industrial equipment? A weeklong arctic chill just may have settled the power-line issue in many minds.
Charles Simmons, the Apco official who has been shepherding the power-line proposal, acknowledges that the situation caused by the weather may have helped Apco make its case.
The demand on Apco's system for power stretched the company to levels it had not expected to reach until the year 2000, he said. Wednesday morning, Jan. 19, Apco set a new record for peak winter power use of 6,877 megawatts. That broke a record set just three days before. And it exceeded the old record set in December 1989 by 15 percent.
Although Apco has added several thousand customers since the 1989 peak, the main reason for the big jump in power use is that individual customers are using more electricity, Simmons said.
The potential problem that Appalachian faced during the recent period was not one of power generation but of power distribution, he explained.
In fact, AEP had enough power that it could continue selling some of the excess to other utilities at the same time demand by Apco's own customers was hitting record levels.
During the crisis, AEP did eliminate the sales of excess power to some utilities but continued others. The sales that took place included the movement of 500 megawatts of electricity to Virginia Power, which was in a much worse situation and was forced to impose temporary blackouts.
It's difficult to determine how much higher Apco's peak would have gone without the call for voluntary conservation, Simmons said. The company has estimated that demand might have gone up another 300 megawatts without conservation.
There is no question, he said, that the peak demand exceeded the point where the transmission system could have withstood the loss of a major power line, Simmons said. The loss of a major line could have caused the rest of the system to fall like a string of dominoes.
Jeff Janosko, chairman of a coalition that opposes construction of the new power line for environmental and health reasons, argues that if Apco was still selling power during the period of record demand, then customers were never in danger of losing power.
Apco itself contributed to the record power use by promoting the installation of electric heat pumps through a $1 million-a-year advertising campaign, Janosko said. If Apco had pushed energy conservation instead, there would have been no problem, he said.
Simmons responds that no responsible person would have suggested interrupting deliveries of power to Virginia Power, which was already in serious trouble. The Richmond-based utility serving the eastern and northern regions of Virginia and part of North Carolina, on Jan. 19 imposed rolling blackouts of its customers while Apco called for voluntary cutbacks of non-essential power.
Virginia Power's action has promoted the State Corporation Commission to launch an investigation of the performance of the utility's power plants.
Arguments that Apco could eliminate the need for the new line by eliminating sales to other utilities fall apart when taking into account that company studies show the new line will be needed to maintain reliable service to Apco's own customers in 1999, around the same time Apco's contract to sell power to Virginia Power expires, Simmons said.
In the meantime, as the debate plays itself out, many people probably are taking their electric service a little less for granted.
by CNB