AEP Modernizes Test Automation Strategy

How American Electric Power scaled software test automation across a complex power grid utility

American Electric Power (AEP) used Keysight Automation Intelligence, also known as Eggplant Test, to expand software test automation across its enterprise. AEP serves more than 5.5 million customers, employs 17,000 people, and operates over 40,000 miles of electricity transmission lines. Its objective was to move beyond isolated automation projects, shorten testing timeframes, improve software quality, and enable technical and business teams to participate in testing.

Why did AEP modernize its test automation strategy?

Software supports critical utility operations and customer services, so defects can affect reliability, efficiency, revenue, and user experience. After early improvements in automation and DevOps efficiency, AEP needed a repeatable cross-team adoption model that could scale. The organization chose demanding, high-impact applications to demonstrate whether the technology could test complex real-world systems and earn confidence from leaders and business users.

How was Keysight Automation Intelligence (Eggplant Test) applied?

A major proof point involved AEP’s highly graphical, map-based field mobility application. Successful testing showed that the platform could handle a complex operational user experience. AEP also applied Automation Intelligence (Eggplant Test) to regional customer websites used to report outages and manage billing.

The team modelled user actions and ran exploratory tests on these customer-facing systems. This work uncovered 17 major errors in a financial module that previous code checks had not identified. In another website test, AEP found and corrected defects after code review had failed to reveal the cause. The correction was followed by a $170,000 revenue increase within 30 days.

AEP also broadened access to test creation. John Alexander, the utility’s lead automation developer and project architect, created a digital twin and reusable snippets. These resources allowed non-technical business users to build test cases in a few clicks, without coding knowledge or deep expertise in Automation Intelligence (Eggplant Test).

What results did AEP achieve?

Results covered scale, speed, quality, and cost.

• $1.2 million in annual savings
• 65% reduction in development time
• 75% reduction in test execution time
• 55 applications tested
• More than 1,400 test scenarios completed
• 82 defects found and fixed before production
• 925,000 exploratory testing scenarios discovered using Automation Intelligence (Eggplant Test)

Beyond the individual metrics, AEP expanded model-based testing and software quality practices across multiple teams. The program increased trust in automation and helped QA staff see the operational and economic effect of their work while supporting AEP’s emphasis on teamwork and work-life balance.

What can power grid utility teams learn from AEP?

AEP’s experience shows how a utility can scale model-based testing across operational and customer-facing applications. Its approach combined difficult initial use cases, internal technical leadership, reusable test assets, and business-user enablement. The result was earlier defect detection, faster execution, reduced development effort, broader participation in quality assurance, and documented financial impact.

Power grid utility engineers and managers evaluating enterprise test automation can contact Keysight to discuss the AEP implementation, including graphical application testing, digital twins, reusable test components, exploratory testing, and cross-team adoption for critical utility software.