Two numbers landed within a day of each other this week, and together they say more than either one does alone.
What happened
Ethan Howland of Utility Dive reported on October 29 that American Electric Power has lifted its five year capital plan to $100 billion, a 30 percent jump from the $78 billion it had been working from. In the same stretch of days, Quanta Services, the contractor that supplies much of the craft labor for work like this, told investors it is carrying a record $63.7 billion backlog and that it has grown by 26,000 people this year.
AEP’s plan covers 2027 through 2031. It breaks out to roughly $37 billion for transmission, $36 billion for generation and $22 billion for distribution, according to the company’s third quarter release. AEP employs close to 18,000 people across 11 states, from Ohio and West Virginia to Texas and Oklahoma. In the third quarter alone it signed 15 gigawatts of new customer load commitments, and it now expects 84 gigawatts of contracted load by 2031, up 22 percent from the 69 gigawatts it reported three months earlier.
Quanta’s quarter tells the other half of it. Revenue came in at $12.01 billion, and the backlog grew by about $10 billion in three months. Backlog is simply work already under contract that has not been built yet, which makes it the closest thing this industry has to a hiring forecast.
Why it counts
A capital plan is a promise about money. A backlog is a promise about people, and somebody has to go find them.
Duke Austin, Quanta’s president and chief executive, spent a good part of the company’s October 29 earnings call on that problem, and he was blunt about where the real constraint sits.
None of this is possible without our craft labor, and you cannot buy craft, you have to build it.
Austin said the company has invested in its workforce for more than a decade, is putting money into curriculum and training programs across its operations, and is deliberately growing its foreman and superintendent ranks, which he described as having a multiplier effect. The logic is plain enough: a crew is only as big as the number of people qualified to lead one.
He also described training on the underground side that gives a worker more than one way to stay in the trade. Rather than dropping out of a program, he said, someone can become “a plumber, a boilermaker, electrician and stay on the ground.” Asked whether labor would be the thing that slows the buildout, Austin’s answer was four words long: “I don’t think labor is going to be the issue.”
There is a third set of jobs here that usually goes uncounted. Peter Mwaniki of Construction Review Online reported on October 29 that AEP has selected Jacobs to run a five year transmission program across Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia, leading a team that includes ORC, GFT and RC Commonwealth. That scope is project management, engineering and design, siting, environmental services, right of way and public outreach. All of it happens years before anyone sets a tower, and all of it is payroll.
The numbers
- $100 billion: AEP’s capital plan for 2027 through 2031, up 30 percent from $78 billion.
- $37 billion, $36 billion, $22 billion: the transmission, generation and distribution shares of that plan.
- 84 gigawatts: contracted customer load AEP now expects by 2031, up 22 percent from 69 gigawatts a quarter earlier.
- 15 gigawatts: new load commitments AEP signed in the third quarter alone.
- Nearly 18,000: people AEP employs across its 11 state footprint.
- $63.7 billion: Quanta’s backlog at September 30, a company record, up about $10 billion in three months.
- 26,000: people Quanta says it added this year. Austin put the longer run average at 6,000 to 8,000 a year.
- $12.01 billion: Quanta’s third quarter revenue, against $7.63 billion a year earlier.
- 702 megawatts: the Wyoming fuel cell project AEP has under construction using Bloom Energy units, backed by a 20 year agreement with Google and expected online in 2028.
What comes next
Ohio is near the front of the line. Asked which 765 kilovolt projects move first, Austin named two states: “We’re probably farther along in Texas, Ohio, probably be the first 2 to go.” A 765 kilovolt line is the highest voltage class on the American grid, built to move very large blocks of power over long distances with less loss than lower voltage lines, and it takes bigger structures, bigger foundations and bigger crews than anything below it.
The Ohio work already has a name and a map. Jordan Lewis of Ohio Farm Bureau laid out AEP Ohio’s Piketon Area Improvements project: a new Baku substation in Pike County plus roughly 50 miles of new 765 kilovolt line running to the Gavin substation near Cheshire, estimated at about $1.1 billion, and a second line from Hanging Rock to Baku with about 33 miles of new line, about 7 miles rebuilt and about 3 miles relocated. The routes touch Pike, Jackson, Gallia, Meigs, Scioto and Lawrence counties.
Neither line is settled, and that is the part worth watching. Both need approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board, which is where the route actually gets decided. The first line is docketed as 26-0426-EL-BTX, and the board held a local public hearing on October 27 at Jackson High School in Jackson. The second line gets its own docket. Meanwhile AEP has three 765 kilovolt lines in the Piketon plan targeted to go in service at the end of 2028, 2029 and 2030, which is the schedule the hiring has to match.
The Bottom Line
Spending plans get revised. Load forecasts get revised almost every quarter. What is much harder to revise is a person who has spent four years learning to pull conductor, splice cable or run a bucket, and that is the asset both of these companies are now openly competing to build. AEP has put $100 billion and 11 states behind the work. Quanta has put 26,000 new names on the roster to do it. Somewhere in Pike County, a siting board will decide where the first towers go, and the crews will be trained and waiting when it does.
Sources: Ethan Howland, “AEP increases investment plan 30% on generation, transmission spending,” Utility Dive, Oct. 29, 2026; American Electric Power, third quarter 2026 results, Oct. 28, 2026; Quanta Services, “Quanta Services Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results,” Oct. 29, 2026; Quanta Services Q3 2026 earnings call transcript, The Motley Fool, Oct. 29, 2026; Peter Mwaniki, “Jacobs Joins AEP’s $37B Transmission Expansion Across Seven States,” Construction Review Online, Oct. 29, 2026; Jordan Lewis, “Updates on Piketon Area Improvements Transmission Project,” Ohio Farm Bureau, Sept. 8, 2026.
