Anyone interested in more immediate information about power outages and restorations in the Appalachian Power service area can visit the company’s new, updated online maps.

Every 15 minutes the maps update by showing the locations of each outage, including the date and time it was reported, estimated restoration times and more.

It’s the latest update, now using the Google Maps platform, that Appalachian Power’s parent company, American Electric Power, hopes will help customers get information more quickly.

“We all sort of expect that we are able to get information that we need, when we need it, and your utilities should be no different,” said Joelle Connors, external affairs manager for AEP.

No account number is necessary to view this public information, she said. Just visit either appalachianpower.com/outagemap, to see West Virginia; or aepohio.com/outagemap for Ohio.

It’s one way that the company is working to make the restoration process “more transparent to the customer,” Connors said.

Those maps are searchable, too. For example, someone curious about all outages going on in a certain county can search by that county. And it allows zooming into the neighborhood levels, Connors said.

No matter what kind of search, online visitors will be able to find the number of customers who are without service due to a specific incident; the cause of the outage when that info is available, and the total number of customers who are currently without service. The maps website runs all day long, Connors said.

Also on the website, visitors can report a power outage, check outage status, get outage alerts and link to a tutorial on how to use the site.

Information on specific accounts isn’t available on the maps, but Appalachian Power customers can use their account number to sign up for mobile alerts that come through text messaging. Those alerts will include estimated restoration times for a particular account. There’s a link on the maps page to sign up for those mobile alerts.