American Electric Power is reorganizing its distribution and customer service operations into seven regional utility divisions, placing operational authority in the hands of division presidents and their support staffs.

Appalachian Power, led by president and chief operating officer Dana Waldo, will serve approximately 975,000 AEP customers in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, except those in the Wheeling, W.Va., area. Appalachian Power will have headquarters in Charleston, W.Va., with external affairs and regulatory services offices in Charleston and Richmond, Va.

"We are creating strong regional utilities to move decision-making responsibility closer to the customers and other external stakeholders," said Michael G. Morris, AEP chairman, president and chief executive officer. "Dana and his staff will have first-hand knowledge of distribution system conditions and any customer concerns in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. They will have full authority to make decisions on operation and maintenance of the distribution system to address those concerns."

Prior to the reorganization, both distribution and customer service functioned on a centralized basis, reporting to AEP management in Columbus. State presidents focused primarily on legislative and regulatory issues.

In the new organizational structure, Waldo will have authority for distribution operations and a wide range of customer and regulatory relationships. Generation, transmission, distribution dispatch, call centers and support services will continue to operate on a centralized basis.

"Creating regional organizations for distribution operations and customer service but keeping other operations centralized will strengthen our ties to the local communities while retaining the efficiencies and low costs that are important to our customers and regulators," Morris said.

Appalachian Power will have management and staff responsible for distribution operations (including engineering, design and safety), customer services (including customer account management and meter operations), external affairs (including state government relations, environmental affairs, community affairs and communications), regulatory services (including regulatory filings administration and interface with public service commission staffs), and financial (including budgeting and analysis activities and tracking financial performance).

The Appalachian Power utility division will include areas served by two legal public utility subsidiaries of AEP: Appalachian Power Co. and Kingsport Power Co. Each public utility subsidiary will still exist for legal and regulatory purposes.

Organizational changes are effective June 1.

Waldo will report to Holly Koeppel, executive vice president – AEP Utilities-East.  He will be joining AEP in early June.

Waldo currently is president and CEO of the West Virginia Roundtable, a private, non-profit, non-partisan association whose members include the chief executive officers of West Virginia´s leading business, education and economic development organizations.

Prior to joining the Roundtable, Waldo was AEP’s state president in West Virginia. In that capacity, he was responsible for AEP´s external affairs and public policy activities in West Virginia, including liaison with customers, regulators, legislators and members of the public. With AEP for 25 years, Waldo held various accounting, financial forecasting and operational positions, including vice president of Appalachian Power and president and COO of Wheeling Power Co., an AEP public utility subsidiary.

Waldo has served on the board of directors of Advantage Valley, the Business and Industrial Development Corporation of Kanawha Valley, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the West Virginia Manufacturers Association and the West Virginia Roundtable. He also served as a trustee of the University of Charleston and as a member of the visiting committee of the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. In 1998, Governor Underwood appointed him to the West Virginia Council for Community and Economic Development.

Waldo received a bachelor’s of science in Business Administration with a major in accounting from Franklin University and a master’s of business administration from Ohio University. He also attended management development programs at the Ohio State University and the University of Virginia´s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.  
Other AEP regional utility divisions will be:

·         AEP-Ohio, headquartered in Columbus, will include all of AEP’s customers in Ohio and the northern West Virginia panhandle near Wheeling, W.Va. AEP-Ohio will serve approximately 1.44 million customers.

·         Indiana-Michigan Power will include all AEP customers in Indiana and Michigan. Operations will have headquarters in Fort Wayne, Ind., with external affairs offices in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, and Lansing, Mich. Indiana-Michigan Power will serve approximately 575,000 customers.

·         Kentucky Power will include all of AEP’s Kentucky customers and have headquarters in Frankfort, Ky. Kentucky Power will serve approximately 175,000 customers.

·         AEP-Texas will include all customers currently served by AEP´s Texas Central and Texas North subsidiaries.  Operations will have headquarters in Corpus Christi, Texas, but external affairs and regulatory services offices will remain in Austin. AEP Texas will serve approximately 901,000 customers.

·         Public Service Company of Oklahoma, or PSO, will include all of AEP´s Oklahoma customers.  Operations will have headquarters in Tulsa.  External affairs and regulatory services offices will be in Oklahoma City. PSO will serve approximately 505,000 customers.

·         Southwestern Electric Power, or SWEPCO, will include all AEP customers in Louisiana, Arkansas and northeast Texas. SWEPCO headquarters will be in Shreveport, La. SWEPCO will serve approximately 439,000 customers.

American Electric Power owns and operates more than 42,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States and select international markets and is the largest electricity generator in the U.S.  AEP is also one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, with more than 5 million customers linked to AEP’s 11-state electricity transmission and distribution grid.  The company is based in Columbus, Ohio.

EDITORS NOTE

Logos, photographs and other information relevant to the reorganization can be downloaded at www.aep.com/go/regions.