Kentucky Power Team Heads to Florida Ahead of Hurricane Michael

ASHLAND, Kentucky, Oct. 9 -- Kentucky Power, a unit of American Electric Power, issued the following news release:

About 100 Kentucky Power employees and contractors left Tuesday for Florida to assist with any outages that could result from Hurricane Michael. The storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday with winds of 120 mph, life-threatening storm surge and heavy rain.

Company line mechanics and contract crews, including workers with Davis H. Elliott and 5 Star Electric, will assist Gulf Power in northwest Florida. Kentucky Power assessors will assist Duke Energy Florida, based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The assistance is part of the mutual assistance program. Under this voluntary partnership of investor-owned electric companies, utilities commit to help restore power when assistance is required during major outages. The decades-old program allows electric companies unaffected by a major event, such as in a hurricane or snowstorm, to provide help to those in need. Mutual assistance allows electric companies affected by a major event to dramatically increase the size of their workforce by borrowing highly skilled employees from those unaffected by the outage. The receiving companies pay the expenses of the traveling crews, not Kentucky Power customers.

"We are happy to be able to help our peer companies," said Kentucky Power President Matt Satterwhite. "Mutual assistance is an essential part of the electric power industry, allowing Kentucky Power and other utilities to respond quickly in emergencies that can lead to significant damage to the energy grid. The loss of power in this or any disaster really stresses the value of electricity and makes it a lot easier for people to understand the value of the services electric companies provide their customers. We are vital to living in America."