Kentucky Power plans to help families in need with their bills this winter through the home energy assistance program called HEART - The Home Energy Assistance in Reduced Temperatures program. This program assists participating income qualified customers over several months. Community Action will approve and administer assistance through their regional agencies. Applications for HEART are currently being accepted.
HEART assistance will be available in the months of January to April when people use more electricity because of cold weather. Approved participants with electric heat receive $115 each of the four designated months. Customers with non-electric heat qualify for $58 a month for four months.
Kentucky Power also offers a voluntary assistance fund. Under the donation HEART program, customers can elect on their bill to make a special contribution that also would assist neighbors in need. Kentucky Power will match customer contributions up to $20,000 a year.
Customers seeking heating assistance should contact their local community action agency to apply. Community Action of Kentucky agencies are:
- Big Sandy Area Community Action Program. Counties: Floyd, Johnson, Magoffin, Martin and Pike. http://bsacap.org. 606-789-3641.
- Gateway Community Action Agency. Counties: Morgan and Rowan. http://gatewaycaa.org. 1-800-927-3133.
- LKLP Community Action Council. Counties: Knott, Leslie, Letcher and Perry. http://www.lklp.org.
- 1-800-401-4287.
- Middle Kentucky Community Action Partnership. Counties: Breathitt and Owsley. http://www.mkcap.org. 606-666-2452.
- Northeast Kentucky Community Action Agency. Counties: Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Lawrence and Greenup. http://nkcaa.net. 1-800-817-4443.
Kentucky Power, with headquarters in Ashland, provides electric service to about 165,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties. Kentucky Power is an operating company in the AEP system, based in Columbus, Ohio. AEP’s more than 17,000 employees operate the nation’s largest electricity transmission system and more than 219,000 miles of distribution lines to deliver safe, reliable power to nearly 5.4 million regulated customers in 11 states. AEP also is one of the nation’s largest electricity producers with approximately 32,000 megawatts of diverse generating capacity, including 4,300 megawatts of renewable energy.