Staff/Wire reports The U.S. Department of Energy announced it has finalized a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to a subsidiary of American Electric Power – one of the nation’s largest power companies and parent of Public Service Co. of Oklahoma – to upgrade transmission lines across five states, including Oklahoma.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the funds will strengthen grid reliability and ensure lower electricity costs across the midwestern region of the United States.
AEP Transmission will upgrade almost 5,000 miles of power lines in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and West Virginia to enhance grid reliability and capacity, the Energy Department said. The project is meant to help meet surging electricity demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.
The project will include replacement of 1,400 miles of electricity transmission lines in Oklahoma that serve approximately 1.2 million people.
The work will create more than 1,000 construction jobs and enhance grid reliability and capacity in rapidly growing areas.
“This loan guarantee will not only help modernize the grid and expand transmission capacity but will help position the United States to win the AI race and grow our manufacturing base,” Wright said.
The AEP financial close is also the first closed loan guarantee under the Energy Dominance Financing Program created by the Working Families Tax Cut, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that President Trump signed into law this year. All electric utilities receiving an EDF loan must provide assurance to the DOE that financial benefits from the financing will be passed on to the customers of that utility.
Earlier this month, the administration cancelled $7.6 billion in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states. A total of 223 projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable, the Energy Department said.
The loan guarantee to AEP was among those conditionally approved under President Joe Biden, a fact Wright acknowledged to reporters. “Not all of the (Biden-era) projects were nonsense,” he said, adding that he was “happy to move forward” with the transmission upgrade.
Ohio-based American Electric Power, which owns AEP Transmission, is one of the nation’s largest utilities, serving 5.6 million customers in 11 states. It primarily produces electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear power, along with renewable resources such as wind and hydroelectric power.
Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, another AEP subsidiary, is an electric utility company that serves 578,000 customer accounts in eastern and southwestern Oklahoma, including Lawton, Altus, Duncan, Cache, Elgin, Fletcher, Porter Hill, Sterling, Apache, Cement, Cyril and Frederick.