Arkansas Public Service commissioner Kim O’Guinn to join Southwest Power Pool

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by Jeff Della Rosa ([email protected]) December 20, 2022 2:00 pm 1,081 views 

Little Rock-based regional transmission organization Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has named Kim O’Guinn to be the director of state regulatory policy. O’Guinn is a commissioner of the Arkansas Public Service Commission (PSC).

According to a Tuesday (Dec. 20) news release, O’Guinn will lead SPP’s state regulatory policy efforts and support the company’s work on regional transmission organization policy issues, interacting with an array of stakeholder groups and organizations. Her last day on the Public Service Commission will be Jan. 7. Her first day at SPP will be Jan. 9.

“SPP is thrilled to welcome Kim to our team,” said Paul Suskie, SPP executive vice president of regulatory policy. “As a former president of the Regional State Committee (RSC), Kim is very familiar with SPP, and her experience as a nationally respected commissioner is a great asset to the organization.”

The RSC is part of SPP’s governance and comprises utility regulators from 15 states.

O’Guinn is an environmental engineer with more than 20 years of regulatory experience in the utility industry. In 2016, Gov. Asa Hutchinson appointed her to the Arkansas Public Service Commission.

“I am very excited to be a part of the SPP team,” said O’Guinn. “My career has been dedicated to regulatory issues, which provided me an opportunity to work with SPP and its stakeholders during my tenure at the PSC. I look forward to working with an amazing team of people.”

Before her PSC role, she was the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s director of communication and permit engineer at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of Air.

She’s held leadership roles with Entergy Regional State Committee, the Organization of MISO States, SPP’s RSC, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the Electric Power Research Institute Advisory Council, Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, the American Association of Blacks in Energy and Arkansas Women in Power. She earned a Bachelor of Science in environmental engineering from the University of Oklahoma.