Company Profile

Valley Electric Association (VEA), is a nonprofit electric utility based in Pahrump, Nevada. Since 1965 when it was incorporated, and even before that, most of what today is VEA, was a co-op. Moreover, VEA has maintained the co-op principles of doing business throughout its 40-plus year history.

Farmers Started VEA

Although the VEA service territory is now, in the year 2008, fast becoming more suburbanized, mainly in its largest, and fast-growing community of Pahrump, it was farmers in the Pahrump and Amargosa valleys who initially organized and formed the co-op in 1963. That is when it was first known as the Amargosa Valley Cooperative. In fact, the modern-day utility that evolved into VEA still serves substantial irrigation power loads in the Amargosa and Fish Lake valley portions of its service area. But in 2006, VEA’s residential power users make up most of the co-op’s memberships and they are by far the co-op’s biggest single consumer group.

Central Station Power

Those farmers in the early 1960s, realized that using what was then called “central station power,” which is utility-based electricity, would be much more advantageous, both for farm and residential use, than the individual diesel-generated electrical power that was most prevalent at the time.
Businesses, would also benefit from central station power.

Utilities Join To Form VEA

In the early 1960s, three other small utilities joined with the Amargosa Valley Co-op to eventually form what is the present-day VEA. The Amargosa Valley Cooperative bought the Amargosa Power Company and also the Beatty Utility Company. The White Mountain Electric Co-op in Fish Lake Valley then voted to use the AVC’s management, office, engineering and other services to lower its costs. In November 1964, these entities consolidated their joint efforts and on April 8, 1965, they incorporated as Valley Electric Association, in large part because a single, united utility made it much easier to procure funding for what the new co-op needed most, a transmission line. 

REA Finances First Line

It was the mission of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), which then President Franklin D. Roosevelt had started in the mid-1930s, to electrify rural America. On May 5, 1962, REA Administrator Norman Clapp approved a $3.94 million construction loan to the Amargosa Valley Co-op to build a 138 kilovolt (kv) transmission line; which was completed and energized on March 16, 1963.

VEA Serves A Huge Area

VEA’s service territory is huge, even larger now than when its forerunner utility was started, and it includes more than 6,800 square miles of land, located mainly along the California-Nevada border, but most of it in Nevada. In the south, the service area starts in Sandy Valley, southwest of Las Vegas, and extends for more than 250 miles to Fish Lake Valley and beyond (roughly halfway to Reno), in the north. In fact, the co-op’s service area is larger than the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. At present VEA provides electricity to almost 16,000 memberships and to a total of almost 20,000 meters. In 2005, VEA sold almost 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, and took in almost $38 million in electric sales. VEA is now a $100 million-plus company. Although these totals are significant and growing daily, that wasn’t always the norm. In fact, in early 1963, when the Amargosa Valley Co-op built its 138 kilovolt (kv) transmission line (despite an unsuccessful court challenge to its construction from Nevada Power), and when it initially transported lower-cost hydroelectric-generated energy from dams on the Colorado River into then sparsely-populated Nye County, Nevada, where Pahrump and Amargosa Valley are located, the fledgling co-op served a total of only 607 meters.

Growth Spurs a New Line

The 138 kv transmission line served the co-op in good stead (and it still does) in a primary capacity until member and load growth in the service area forced VEA to build a new transmission line, the 230 kv transmission line. Construction on the 230 kv line started on June 26, 1995, and it was completed and energized a little more than nine months later on April 17, 1996. Only a few short months after that, in the summer of 1996, power use in the VEA service area skyrocketed, so much so that, without the new 230 kv line, the former 138 kv transmission line would not have been able to handle VEA consumer demand for power. Brown outs or blackouts would have occurred if the 230 kv line had not been built. 

From LV to PV Headquarters

For many years, VEA’s main office was located in Las Vegas, at 1818 Industrial Road. In 1981, the co-op built a main office in Pahrump Valley (which is currently VEA’s engineering headquarters) at 800 E. Highway 372. VEA directors at the time correctly determined that Pahrump, with its proximity to Las Vegas, would have the most growth and would therefore be the location most appropriate for its headquarters building. That 1981 facility served the co-op well until, once again because of growth and consumer demand for improved facilities, and right on the heels of finishing its 230 kv transmission line, VEA began plans for a new, larger headquarters building. That headquarters building, which is still VEA’s main office, was constructed due west of the first main office in Pahrump, and it opened for business on October 13, 1997.

VEA Looks to the Future