A local power cooperative in Pahrump was awarded an $80.3 million federal loan for a solar project that would produce enough electricity to power 3,500 homes in the Pahrump and the Fish Lake Valley region.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to invest $140 million for solar in rural communities in Kentucky and Nevada. Investment funds for the projects were sourced from the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Valley Electric Association, an energy cooperative based in Pahrump, plans to use its $80.3 million investment to install a 37-megawatt solar power generation and storage system that would serve a portion of their 20,100 members in Pahrump and the Fish Lake Valley region. 

Valley Electric Association was selected for the investment after committing to lower electricity rates for their members while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The project is also expected to strengthen the energy grid and keep critical services powered in the region. 

“We put a lot of effort into rural development with these new Inflation Reduction Act investments in making sure that it is reaching the hardest to reach places and communities that are often underserved,” USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small said.

In Nye County, home to the growing city of Pahrump, up to 40% of the population has three or more socioeconomic risk factors – high poverty rates, age, and low educational attainment, for example – that would make it difficult for them to absorb, endure, and recover from climate disasters, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment — a congressionally mandated report due roughly every five years

“Rural people deserve continued energy opportunities as demand for clean energy increases,” Torres Small said. “The Biden-Harris Administration is working to make sure efforts to tackle climate change also help grow the local economy.”

The solar project is still in the initial stages of permitting, meaning it may take years for construction to start.

Valley Electric Association is one of approximately 900 member-owned electric cooperatives in the U.S., according to the power company. Valley Electric serves communities participating in the Rural Partners Network (RPN), a USDA-led collaboration between federal, state and local partners to help underserved communities access federal funding.

Both the projects selected in Kentucky and Nevada are part of the USDA’s Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program, the largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936, according to the agency.

So far, USDA has announced more than $665 million of investments selected to proceed under the PACE program. The investment for Valley Electric Association marks the first project funded under the program in Nevada. Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kentucky, and Nebraska have already received investments.

Last year, the USDA made $1 billion available through PACE to fund new clean energy projects and energy storage in rural America. The program provides low-interest loans with up to 60% loan forgiveness to renewable energy developers, rural electric cooperatives and other rural energy providers for renewable energy storage and projects that use wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and biomass.

Nye County officials, including in Pahrump, have expressed some reluctance to embrace utility-scale solar projects. 

Pahrump, the county’s most populous town, has been plagued by declining groundwater levels with domestic well failures increasing annually, according to county officials. Nye County officials expressed concern that cumulative solar development in the basin would only worsen the county’s water woes.

However, the county is also the site of some of the largest planned solar projects in the state, including the 2,250 megawatt Chill Sun Solar Project along the U.S.95, and the 700 megawatt Copper Rays Solar Project southwest of Pahrump.