COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 31, 1999 -- Three years and more than $44 million after American Electric Power (NYSE:AEP) began readying itself for Y2K, the electric utility is confident it has adequately prepared for the dawning of the new year. All systems necessary to keep electricity flowing to AEP’s 3 million customers have been reviewed to ensure they will continue to function when the calendar flips forward to Jan. 1. Employees also participated in two industry-sponsored drills to test back-up plans. Since AEP must be prepared daily to respond to emergency situations, numerous contingency plans were already in place. The company developed Y2K-specific back-up plans to complement those existing contingency plans. Examples of specific contingency plans include backup telecommunications equipment, additional power generation reserves, staffing key substations, preparing a backup system control center, topping off fuel tanks, increasing coal reserves and beefing up staffing to respond to critical situations. “As an electric utility, AEP must be able to respond to emergencies, such as restoring outages caused by bad weather, tree limbs on power lines or animals damaging transformers,” said Joseph Valentine, AEP’s vice president - year 2000 project. “The uniqueness of the Y2K situation prompted us to take a closer look at our emergency plans and fine tune some of the procedures. We don’t expect the rollover to uncover any surprises,” Valentine said. Employees normally scheduled to work the evening and late night shift will have plenty of company during the rollover. Additional employees will be working throughout the evening, and others will be on standby. These will include employees whose job it is to repair downed power lines and restore electricity for customers, as well as other workers assigned to investigate the cause of any electrical outages and get the word out to the public as quickly as possible. “On any given day, we experience outages in different areas of our seven-state service territory due to bad weather and other reasons,” said Mike Heyeck, AEP’s director - transmission operations. “Because of the heightened sensitivity created by Y2K, we will have additional employees available to resolve any problems quickly and to provide timely information about those outages. “While we are not anticipating any Y2K-related problems, we understand that some of our customers may have concerns, and we will be there for them,” Heyeck said. AEP will work with the news media throughout the evening to keep customers informed of outages or other events that may affect their service. Customers who are experiencing an outage are asked to report the problem to AEP by calling the toll-free telephone number listed on their electricity bill. AEP, a global energy company, is one of the United States' largest investor-owned utilities, providing energy to 3 million customers in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. AEP has holdings in the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Australia. Wholly owned subsidiaries provide power engineering, energy consulting and energy management services around the world. The company is based in Columbus, Ohio. On Dec. 22, 1997, AEP announced a definitive merger agreement for a tax-free, stock-for-stock transaction with Central and South West Corp., a public utility holding company based in Dallas.