AEP Ohio, a subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP), has reached a settlement with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to expand its smart grid infrastructure with a $350 million investment. The project aims to enhance grid reliability and resilience through the installation and upgrade of Distribution Automation Circuit Reconfiguration (DACR) technologies on up to 412 circuits across the company's 61-county service area.

The DACR system automatically detects outages and reroutes power to minimize disruptions. By upgrading 333 circuits and enhancing 79 others, AEP Ohio hopes to improve restoration times and reduce the frequency and duration of outages. The investment is part of the company’s broader gridSMART program, which uses advanced automation technologies to improve grid performance.

This project builds on previous successful phases, which included DACR installations across 325 circuits and helped prevent millions of minutes of customer downtime. Marc Reitter, president and COO of AEP Ohio, emphasized the importance of continuing these efforts to provide more reliable power for customers, stating that automation technology has already led to improved service across the region.

The upgrades are expected to be completed within the next six years, pending PUCO approval.

Source: power-grid.com