AEP splits its $37 billion transmission program between Jacobs in the east and WSP in the west

Jacobs gets seven states, the company said on October 29: Michigan and Indiana in the north, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, plus Virginia and West Virginia. Its scope runs from project management, controls and design to route siting, community outreach, land rights and environmental studies. ORC, GFT and RC Commonwealth are on its team. Jacobs said delivery has already started. WSP USA takes Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Its release lists planning, environmental review, permitting, engineering and program management among the services it brings.

The $37 billion is the transmission share of a $100 billion spending plan covering 2027 to 2031 that AEP announced on October 28, ENR reported. Roughly $17 billion goes to work ordered by regional grid operators, $11 billion to reliability upgrades and $9 billion to lines built for single customers. AEP wants almost three times as many miles of 765-kV line as it runs today and expects contracted load to grow by 84 GW by 2031. Data centers, crypto miners included, account for 92% of that.

The biggest single job is about $5 billion of 765-kV lines for a 10.4-GW data center campus SB Energy plans on the site of the old Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant in Piketon, Ohio. Crews are scheduled to start in the first three months of 2027, and the three lines are targeted to energize one a year from late 2028 to late 2030. For the rest of the work AEP still needs approval from FERC, PJM and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. On a separate 5,000-mile reconductoring program backed by a federal loan guarantee, an AEP spokesman told ENR that contractors will be chosen project by project.