Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017 | 11:30 a.m.
Valley Electric Association, a Pahrump-based utility, announced today it has sold its 230-kilovolt transmission system to GridLiance, a Dallas-based operator of transmission systems, for just more than $200 million.
The system includes more than 160 miles of transmission lines and related substations in Nye and Clark counties. Transmission lines are typically the larger lines strung on towers and are considered the superhighways of the electrical grid.
Valley Electric serves several small communities along the Nevada-California border, including Sandy Valley, Pahrump, Amargosa Valley, Beatty and Fish Lake Valley, a portion of which is in California.
The main part of the transmission system included in the sale runs from just outside Boulder City and west toward the California-Nevada border, then north through Sandy Valley, Pahrump and Amargosa Valley before turning east and then south along U.S. 95, almost to Las Vegas.
Valley Electric says it will use some of the cash from the sale to pay off $82 million of debt associated with the transmission system.
Also, because the utility is a electric cooperative — its customers are also owners and members of the organization — Valley Electric will give some of the cash from the sale to some of current and former customers.
The utility will be distributing $18 million among the owner-members who paid into the construction and maintenance of the transmission system.
In addition, Valley has said it will give $5 million to its charitable foundation to build a recreation center on land adjacent to its headquarters in Pahrump. It will also use some of the sale proceeds to fund a broadband fiber-optic network it is building.
