The Biden-Harris Administration today announced $140 million for clean energy projects in rural Nevada and Kentucky that will lower power bills for households, expand reliable access to clean energy and create jobs for rural families, small businesses and agricultural producers.
The projects in Kentucky and Nevada are part of the USDA’s Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program, which is funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small announced the funding today during a visit to the site of a planned solar power facility in Pahrump. The region is prone to wildfires and outages but will soon have an uninterrupted supply of electricity thanks to a facility that will generate and store energy from the sun.
Valley Electric Association plans to use an $80.3 million investment to install a 37-megawatt solar power generation and storage system to serve Pahrump and the Fish Lake Valley region. The project will strengthen the energy grid, lower rates for the association’s members and keep critical services powered in the region. It will produce enough electricity to power 3,500 homes. 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.
