Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) is an electric utility company headquartered in Shreveport, Louisiana. Founded on June 29, 1912, as Southwestern Gas and Electric Co., it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the U.S. SWEPCO serves over 556,100 customers across a 33,000-square-mile area that includes western Arkansas, northwestern and central Louisiana, and East Texas, including the Panhandle area of North Texas. As of December 2023, SWEPCO reported 1,271 total employees.
SWEPCO's operations encompass the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power. Its diverse energy portfolio includes natural gas, coal, wind, and solar, with a total generating capacity of 6,115 MW, of which SWEPCO's capacity is 5,008 MW. The company is actively investing in new generation projects, including a 450-MW natural gas plant in Hallsville, Texas, and a 1,053-MW natural gas conversion project at its Welsh Power Plant, both anticipated to be operational by 2027-2028. SWEPCO also has renewable projects under construction, such as the 200-MW Diversion Wind Farm in Texas and the 598-MW Wagon Wheel Wind Facility in Oklahoma, expected to be operational by late 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Southwestern Electric Power Co. currently has a litigation posture of an operating company defending against suits, with one tracked case as a defendant and zero as a plaintiff. The single tracked case, Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. et al. v. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware on July 17, 2019.