AEP selects new PSO president
TULSA — Public Service Co. of Oklahoma announced Monday a new president will lead the firm, effective Sept. 8.
Peggy Simmons, currently managing director of transmission asset strategy for PSO’s parent, American Electric Power, steps into a job held the past 14 years by Stuart Solomon.
Simmons, 41, currently is AEP’s managing director of transmission asset strategy.
In that role, she is responsible for developing AEP’s regulatory and strategic policies related to transmission line projects, including conducting outreach with communities that could be impacted by those plans and dealing with rights of way and other siting issues.
Before that, she managed regulatory commodity sourcing for AEP Ohio and was a manager of renewable energy for the AEP.
Simmons holds an economics degree from Ohio State University, a master’s in public policy and administration from Central Michigan University, and graduated from the Executive Program at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. She also is a member of the G100 Next Generation Leadership program.
In her new role as president and chief operating officer for PSO, she will be responsible for its customer service, distribution operations, safety, communications, external affairs and regulatory functions.
“I look forward to working with the team at PSO and our outstanding community partners in Oklahoma,” Simmons stated in a prepared release announcing the change.
“As technology and customer needs continue to change, we’ll work together to continue PSO’s great history of delivering exceptional service to our customers while providing the new services, energy resources and technologies that bring value to the areas we serve.”
An attempt to reach Simmons Monday to seek additional comment was unsuccessful.
Solomon, 56, returns to AEP as a senior vice president of generation services.
Before becoming PSO’s president and chief operating officer in 2004, he had been working for AEP as its vice president of public policy and regulatory services.
“It has been a great honor to lead PSO and work with our talented team to serve our customers, communities and the state,” Solomon stated in the release.
“I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and I’m confident Peggy will continue strengthening PSO’s partnerships and connections to those we serve.”
The leadership change comes after AEP’s decision to pull the plug on its Wind Catcher Energy Connection project, which involved PSO and another AEP utility, Southwestern Electric Power.
Wind Catcher had proposed the utilities, which together distribute power to more than 1.1 million customers, buy and operate an enormous wind farm in Oklahoma’s Panhandle and to build and operate a power line to get electricity from the farm to grids they operate.
Southwestern Electric Power, which serves customers in Arkansas and parts of Louisiana and Texas, had obtained regulators’ blessings for the plan in two of the states, but failed to obtain approval for the plan from Texas regulators.
Subsequently, PSO withdrew its request from before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission that sought to recover its projected $1.4 billion costs for the $4.5 billion project from its ratepayers.
There was no indication from AEP that Monday’s announced leadership changes were related to the failure of that plan.