Aquila, Inc. was an electricity and natural gas distribution network headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri in the United States.

[2] On February 6, 2007, the company announced plans for a merger valued at $1.7 billion to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Plains Energy.

Aquila has its roots in the Solomon Valley Milling Company founded in 1902 by Lemuel K. Green in Osborne, Kansas.

In 1989 it assigned its unregulated gas operations to a newly created subsidiary, Aquila Energy Corp.

In 1991, Centel sold its electric utility holdings in Kansas and Colorado to UtiliCorp for $345 million which operated under the name WestPlains Energy.

The stock plummeted to $6.75 in July 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal which had called into question business practices of all electric utilities.

[3] In 2004 five lawsuits were filed in federal court alleging that Aquila's board of directors steered employees into heavily investing their retirement savings in company stock.

[6] 66,000 of the company's customers in Missouri lost power for several days in the Mid-December 2007 North American Winter storms.

[7] In 2007 its electric assets in northwest Missouri were acquired by its historic rival Kansas City Power & Light (via its new parent Great Plains Energy) for $1.7 billion.

[8] Its gas properties, as well as its electric service area in southeastern Colorado (including Pueblo), were acquired by Black Hills Corporation.