AMARILLO, Texas - David Hudson, president and CEO of Southwestern Public Service Company, an Xcel Energy company, has announced the formation of his operating company leadership team serving Texas and New Mexico.

Evan Evans, formerly with El Paso Electric, is the new regional vice president of Rates and Regulatory Affairs. Brenda J. Holland has been promoted to the position of director of Customer and Community Relations. Seth Thomason is the director of Business Customer Relations, and Bill Grant will continue in his role as director of Strategic Planning.

All four are based in the SPS headquarters building in downtown Amarillo.

Evans has 33 years of direct regulatory experience in Texas and New Mexico. He worked in various rates and regulatory roles for 20 years at Central and South West Corp., now part of American Electric Power, including rate analyst, senior rate analyst, case manager, and manager of rate analysis. He was a senior consultant with C.H. Guernsey from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 through 2013, he was assistant vice president of Regulatory Services and Rates for El Paso Electric Company.
Evans is a 1980 graduate of Texas Tech University. He has been a volunteer with Rebuilding Together in El Paso since 2007, and participated in foreign mission initiatives with First Baptist Church of El Paso.

Holland has worked for Xcel Energy and SPS for 28 years in regulatory accounting and rate administration, business consulting, and sales account management positions. In 2012, she became regional manager of Community and Economic Development for the Texas Panhandle. In her new role, Holland directs the group that oversees relationships with community and city leaders and coordinates corporate support for community events and organizations in the SPS Texas and New Mexico operating region.

She earned a bachelor's degree in business administration in accounting from West Texas State University, as it was then known. She later earned a master's degree in business administration from West Texas A&M University.

Holland currently serves on the boards of the Better Business Bureau of the Texas Panhandle and the Don Harrington Discovery Center.  

Thomason continues in his role as director of Business Customer Relations, overseeing a group of account representatives that serve as the primary liaison with large industrial customers in Texas and New Mexico.

Thomason started with SPS in 1977 and has held the positions of marketing services engineer,
manager for agricultural marketing and later manager for industrial marketing. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University, and is a registered professional engineer. He is active in the Amarillo Kiwanis Club - South.

Grant continues in his role as director of Strategic Planning for Texas and New Mexico, directing strategy for transmission expansion planning and Southwest Power Pool policies for cost allocation and recovery. He joined SPS in 1981 as a control room operator at the Maddox Generating Station near Hobbs, N.M. He later worked in real-time trading and power operations in Denver and Amarillo before he was appointed to manage Amarillo's Transmission Control Center and the company's wind energy integration efforts in Texas and New Mexico.

Grant is a native of Roswell, N.M. and a graduate of Goddard High School. He also attended Amarillo College and Wayland Baptist University. He has served in various official capacities with both the Western Systems Power Pool and the Southwest Power Pool. He currently serves on the Southwest Power Pool's Market Operations Policy Committee and Strategic Planning Committee.

SPS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Xcel Energy, serves 376,000 customers over a 52,000-square-mile region that includes the Panhandle and South Plains regions of Texas and eastern and southeastern New Mexico.

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Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company with regulated operations in eight Western and Midwestern states. Xcel Energy provides a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.4 million electricity customers and 1.9 million natural gas customers through its regulated operating companies. Company headquarters are located in Minneapolis. More information is available at www.xcelenergy.com.

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