Planned corporate power outage leaves hundreds of thousands in dark, historic heat without answers
COLUMBUS— Franklin County House Democratic lawmakers today sent a letter to Marc Reitter, President & COO of AEP Ohio calling for accountability after a planned power outage continued to leave hundreds of thousands of Ohioans in Central Ohio without electricity amidst a record heat wave. Customers, including hospitals and cities, were not immediately informed that they would lose power for multiple days, prompting concerns about the human and financial costs to Ohioans impacted by the outage.
AEP has stated the intentional outages have been conducted to protect the power grid, but few answers have been given about why customers were not notified and how the no-power communities were selected. Democrats asked these questions, as well as what AEP is doing to improve the power grid as heat spells become more common due to climate change, in their letter.
The lawmakers are available for additional media comment, interviews and questions TODAY, June 16.