Kansas regulators sign off on Evergy name

The Kansas Corporation Commission approved without debate Tuesday renaming of three longstanding utility companies folded into the Evergy conglomerate created last year in a $14 billion deal.

The three-member regulatory commission agreed with requests to change the name on official documents of Kansas City Power & Light to Evergy Metro and to designate Westar Energy as Evergy Kansas Central and convert Kansas Gas & Electric to Evergy Kansas South.

“I don’t see that there’s any reason not to recognize the name change,” said attorney Walker Hendrix. “It’s a practical sort of resolution to a merger.”

He said recasting the company names in regulatory documents would be undertaken by Evergy over a six-month period given magnitude of the labeling alterations required. Typically, KCC grants companies one month to make the conversion.

KCC chairman Dwight Keen did seek clarification as to whether the first “e” in Evergy would be capitalized. He said it had appeared in uppercase form on official documents, but in lowercase on marketing materials. He said that for purposes of KCC regulation and oversight the new company’s name would be written as Evergy.

Evergy emerged in 2018 through combination of Great Plains Energy, the parent of KCP&L, and Topeka-based Westar Energy, which owned KG&E.

Under an agreement two years in the making, Evergy took responsibility for serving 1 million customers in Kansas and 600,000 customers in Missouri.

Source: Salina Journal