AEP’s 84 gigawatts count letters as well as contracts. The firm figure on the slide is 35

American Electric Power’s release, on 28 October, says 15 gigawatts of new load commitments were signed in the third quarter, and that incremental contracted load is expected to grow to 84 gigawatts by 2031. It says a project is included only if it is backed by a fully executed electric service agreement or a letter of agreement. Those are not the same paper. A letter is not a take-or-pay contract, and neither document is a megawatt-hour that has already been used.

The slides published with the release separate the headline from the firm portion. They say contracted load rose from 69 gigawatts to 84, “driven by additional firm take-or-pay ESAs,” and that about 15 gigawatts of electric service agreements were signed since the second quarter. They also say 35 gigawatts of signed agreements are facilitating the transmission and generation growth in the new capital plan, and they label about 35 gigawatts as incremental load under firm take-or-pay agreements. Thirty-five is not 84. The same deck says the 84 gigawatts expected by 2031 is backed by fully executed agreements and letters of agreement. The plan is being sized to the firm slice. The larger number is the wider category.

Of that 84, the slides assign 46 gigawatts to AEP Texas and 23 to Ohio Power. They name Piketon inside Ohio Power’s electric service agreements, and again inside transmission spending for individual customers. They do not print a megawatt next to the name. A note on the Texas letters of agreement says they reflect the Batch Zero load AEP Texas submitted in July: 45 gigawatts of projects for 2027 to 2032, of which 16 gigawatts was classified as base load and 29 as studied load. Studied is a filing category. It is not the 35 gigawatts of signed take-or-pay agreements, and 45, 46 and 84 are three figures, not one. A note on the data-centre line of the industry split says that label includes crypto customers. The deck does not say what share of the 84 gigawatts is AI load already on a meter.

The money is a plan, dated. The release announces a $100 billion five-year capital plan through 2031. The slides date those five years as 2027 to 2031, with about $37 billion for transmission, $36 billion for generation “backed by long-term customer contracts,” and about $22 billion for distribution. Rate base is expected to reach $162 billion by 2031, and the transmission rate base to approach $70 billion. Fully executed take-or-pay agreements in the vertically integrated states are “expected to generate up to $21 billion” in fixed-cost offsets for existing residential customers over the life of the contracts, up from $16 billion. Expected is the company’s verb. The Indiana example in the release is a proposed rate reduction. Bill Fehrman, the chairman and chief executive, said the company is committed to having new large-load customers bear the incremental system costs they create. That is a policy sentence. It is not a date the first of the 84 gigawatts is switched on.