Bill Fehrman

Bill Fehrman became President and CEO of American Electric Power (AEP) in 2024, taking the helm of one of the largest electric utilities in the United States. AEP serves approximately 5.6 million retail customers across 11 states — from Virginia and West Virginia through Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The company operates the nation's largest electricity transmission network with over 40,000 miles of transmission lines. AEP is uniquely positioned to benefit from the surge in data center power demand driven by AI and cloud computing. Several of AEP's service territories (particularly Virginia/Ohio) are experiencing unprecedented load growth from hyperscale data center construction. This demand growth, after decades of flat utility load, is transforming AEP's investment thesis from a slow-growth regulated utility to a beneficiary of re-industrialization and digital infrastructure buildout. Fehrman's key decisions involve managing the data center interconnection queue, massive capital investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure, generation portfolio transition from coal to renewables and gas, rate case strategy across 11 different regulatory jurisdictions, and balancing new large load growth with existing customer rate impacts.