Building on Relationships
Note: This is the last of three articles discussing economic development progress across AEP’s footprint. Today’s story focuses on national customers. The other stories in this series highlighted wins in our eastern and western footprints.
Ninety-two projects. Ten thousand jobs.
That’s how American Electric Power 's Sales, Economic and Business Development team measures a good year. The SEBD team, spread across AEP’s footprint, worked on 92 projects in 2023 that announced intentions to move forward, which total more than 10,000 direct jobs and 15,000 indirect and induced jobs and $35 billion in investment.
These are big wins for local communities. They could not have happened without the collective efforts of many people from diverse disciplines.
“Our communities and our team here at AEP work tirelessly to attract high-quality projects across our footprint,” said Tim Wells , vice president, Sales, Economic and Business Development. “This sort of success doesn’t happen overnight, and it requires collaboration and teamwork throughout AEP and with our partners in the public sector at federal, state and local levels.”
When it comes to working with some large customers served by multiple AEP utilities, SEBD’s national customer team usually takes the lead.
For example, as electric vehicle sales rise, there is a corresponding need for new charging stations. SEBD’s national customer team works with Tesla across AEP’s footprint to support this infrastructure. Currently there are 57 Tesla charging locations serviced by AEP with 33 more in development. AEP also played a role in the Corpus Christi, Texas region landing Tesla’s lithium processing plant (for EV battery raw material), which broke ground last year.
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As the overall SEBD team has built a relationship with Tesla, they’ve come to be a trusted problem solver. An unplanned outage occurred at Tesla’s factory near Austin, Texas (outside of AEP territory), at the end of 2023. Tesla needed three transformers, and a member of the national customer team found some in Ohio and facilitated the sale and delivery of the equipment to ensure Tesla could restart the factory early in the new year.
“Tesla was able to pick up from AEP on December 27 and install by their January 2 plant restart date thanks to a customer-focused effort by several teams at AEP,” said Ryan Stillwell , business development lead for AEP in Shreveport, La. “The Tesla team was immensely appreciative of AEP's response and support.”
Building relationships isn’t all about new customers. In advance of a base rate filing, the team scheduled a meeting with Marathon Petroleum, Kentucky Power 's largest customer, to discuss issues pertinent to one of Marathon’s refineries.
“This meeting was quite a success,” said Scott Mann , national account executive based in Charleston, W.Va. “These kinds of proactive meetings regarding rate filings have vastly improved the relationship between our operating companies and customers like Marathon in recent years.”
There were many other wins on the economic development front, but one the national customer team was most proud of was hosting Edison Electric Institute 's National Key Accounts Workshop in Columbus in October. The workshop provided a venue for electric companies to engage with large, national customers, like Walmart, Marathon, Amazon, and others, on their energy-related needs. This was the first time AEP hosted the workshop, which had more than 700 registered attendees.
“The success of the National Customer/Associated Business Development/Electric Transportation team all goes back to the collaboration and support we have with not only our customers, but most importantly with our operating companies,” said William Barry Mosser , director business services, National Accounts. “We value the opportunity to be the primary point of contact on behalf of AEP so we can offer up solutions for our 250 or so National Customers.”