POWERGRAMS

We will never come to your door, call or text asking you for an immediate payment or personal information. We only have one residential customer service number (1-800-245-2244) and one business customer service number (1-888-430-5787). Please do not call any other 800 number to pay your bill. We only have one company website, alabamapower.com. If you visit the site from Google, please verify that the URL is indeed alabamapower.com. Scammers are geing more innovative in targeting Alabama Power customers. Remember these tips to protect yourself. Protect yourself from scams Alabama Power Alabama Power takes to the sky takes to the sky to upgrade lines to upgrade lines for customers for customers By car, driving from Attalla to Albertville takes less than a half-hour through the tapering Appalachian foothills of northeast Alabama. As the crow flies – in the old idiom for the shortest flight between two fixed points – the distance isn't quite 20 miles. The rolling hills between those towns are a beautiful but challenging terrain for performing major work on power lines and other structures, said Josh Stough, construction field manager - Power Delivery (PD), General Services Complex (GSC). Completing the job conventionally, with numerous line workers and support personnel, trucks and other vehicles, would require substantial time and resources. To reduce costs and the impacts of moving people and equipment structure by structure along the 20-mile easement, the company used a helicopter. First, the helicopter helped replace 36 existing poles with new ones. Then, it strung new static and fiber lines, unspooling it from structure to structure along the string of 113 towers and poles between Atalla and Albertville. Finally, the helicopter transported line workers and equipment needed to complete the process of connecting and securing the newly strung lines. The project began in early October and wrapped up in November. The time savings alone made "the bird" the right choice for the job. "It's about time and access," Stough explained. "The difficulty of any job varies with the type of terrain involved. In this terrain, bringing in the helicopter cuts the job time to about half of what it would have been if we'd done it conventionally." To illustrate the cost considerations that drove the decision to use a privately operated helicopter, Stough pointed to the time and expense involved in moving line workers from structure to structure over varied terrain. "They have to climb each structure, get the work done, get back down and move on to the next structure," Stough said. "Compare that to being flown in and set down on a tower, then picked up and flown to the next structure as soon as the work on that one is done. You can see how that adds up." The helicopter helped reduce time and disruption in crossing an interstate highway, several state and county thoroughfares and two railroads. That provided other benefits for Alabama Power, its customers and the entire state, said Greg Ray, transmission line inspector – PD, GSC, who coordinated the helicopter work from the ground. "The helicopter helped us to minimize the impact of doing this work, in terms of erosion," Ray said. "Erosion is unavoidable when you have to bring in people and vehicles, and that always needs to be taken into consideration when you're thinking about costs." The project also involved installing "sleeves" on connections at key points along the line. The sleeves reduce the possibility of line breaks that would require dispatching vehicles and personnel to the site, not to mention the impacts to customers experiencing outages caused by broken lines. Working on the lines, accessing rights of way and dealing with landowners in connection with the project required high degrees of planning, cooperation and communication, particularly with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which has lines that intersect with Alabama Power lines near Albertville. "We established direct telecommunications between Alabama Power, TVA and our subcontractors working on the project," Stough said. "Having that capability with TVA will continue to be a big plus as we deal with maintenance." Stough and Ray said the project is a great example of Alabama Power's commitment – and that of the company's Power Delivery organization – to serving customers and communities where they live and work while providing reliable electric service. By Mark Kelly Stough Ray 3 If you detect suspicious activity, contact us at our official customer service numbers or alabamapower.com. Visit alabamapower.com/scam for more tips and to keep up with the latest scams.

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