The Competitive Assets Team

Kit Pevoto, M.S.

Ms. Pevoto brings to Competitive Assets a diversity of experience and knowledge in electric utility operation and regulatory analyses. Her eleven years of experience at the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) in cost allocation, cost unbundling, and pricing analyses as well as expert witness testimony in many electric utility cases allows her to offer our clients a comprehensive foundation of utility cost allocation, cost unbundling, and pricing practices in Texas. Her knowledge of utility cost of service, cost allocation, cost unbundling, rate design, and the implementation of utility tariffs in Texas, form the basis of her ability to analyze restructuring issues in the emerging competitive utility markets. She applies her analytical and research skills to help make Competitive Assets' information products and services of the highest quality.

Ms. Pevoto received her Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. During her two years at UT Arlington, Ms. Pevoto concentrated her study on electrical power systems under the supervision of Dr. Mo-Shen Chen. In particular, she studied issues related to the improvement of the performance of a transmission system by using static var capacitors. After completing her graduate study, she began working on a federally-funded project to study the benefits of the integration of the transmission systems in Texas for the PUCT. The work she has done during her graduate study and on the project proved to be a valuable foundation for her to work on the development of transmission access and pricing rules for Texas wholesale electricity market in 1997. The rules allowed for equal and open access of Texas ERCOT transmission system to all wholesale customers. The transmission rules also implemented a postage stamp pricing system for transmission service provided to all wholesale customers in ERCOT. The rules became the foundation for the development of the deregulated electric wholesale market in Texas, as directed by Texas Legislature in 1995.

Other than the transmission access rulemaking project, Ms. Pevoto also worked on a number of rate cases for cooperatives and investor-owned utilities (IOUs). In these cases, she testified on issues of cost allocation and rate design. Her work included developing complex cost allocation models and rate design analyses. As a result of her work experience in these cases, Ms. Pevoto is very familiar with the cost allocation models for all IOUs under PUCT jurisdiction.

In 1997, after becoming the Manager of the Costing and Pricing Section at the PUCT, Ms. Pevoto started a project to separate the costs of nine IOUs in Texas into generation, transmission, distribution, metering & billing, and customer services categories. In this project, Ms. Pevoto and her staff collected data, developed guidelines and procedures for separating costs, and implemented the cost separation for the nine IOUs. The project produced a report that contains all the data collected, the procedure to separate the costs, and most importantly the results of the cost separation for nine IOUs. The unbundled cost information presented in the report became very useful for the Commission in assisting the Texas Legislature in developing the electric deregulation bill (Senate Bill 7) in the 1999 Legislation. During the 1999 Legislative Session, Ms. Pevoto was heavily involved in developing information and data for the Texas Legislature to review while the Legislature was developing Senate Bill 7. She was also involved in the negotiation among parties regarding the issue of the allocation of stranded costs among customers during the 1999 Legislative Session and assisted in drafting the language reflecting the settlement on this issue to be included in the bill.

In the summer of 1999, shortly after the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 7, Ms. Pevoto led a team developing rules governing the separation of the competitive energy services from the integrated IOUs, the separation of the integrated IOUs into several business units, and the cost separation for the development of the non-bypassable charges, in order to implement the provisions related to business separation and the development of non-bypassable charges in Senate Bill 7. In the spring of 2000, shortly after eight Texas IOUs filed their cost unbundling cases, Ms. Pevoto was involved in the generic proceeding related to these cost unbundling cases. She testified before the Commission as an expert witness on the issues related to cost allocation and rate design for the non-bypassable charges to be applied in these unbundling cases. Ms. Pevoto recommended a simplified and uniform rate design for the transmission and distribution rates for all IOUs. The Commission eventually adopted her recommendations with very minor modifications. She also trained and supervised other staff members to develop and make recommendations on the unbundled costs of the eight IOUs in the cost-unbundling cases. Ms. Pevoto was also involved and made significant contributions in other rulemaking projects for the implementation of the Senate Bill 7, such as the Terms and Conditions of Transmission and Distribution Services and the Price to Beat.

For further information, contact Denise Stokes by or
P.O. Box 140	(512) 581-0151 phone
Red Rock, TX 78662	(512) 581-0185 fax