The Power Has to Get There

Nevada can build all the power plants it wants but that electricity still has to get somewhere to be useful.

For the past four weeks, Great Basin Sun has looked at Nevada’s growing demand for electricity, the large industrial customers driving much of that growth, who may pay for the infrastructure required to serve them, and what happens when customers need power before the utility can deliver it.

The next piece is transmission.

Think of Nevada’s electric system much like its highway system.

Generating plants make electricity. High-voltage transmission lines move large amounts of it over long distances. Substations act like interchanges, moving electricity onto other lines and eventually down to the distribution system that serves individual customers.

Nevada is now building a new electrical highway.

NV Energy’s Greenlink Nevada project will create two major 525-kilovolt transmission lines across much of the state, along with additional 345-kV lines connecting the Yerington area with Reno.

Greenlink West runs from Southern Nevada to the Yerington area. Greenlink North will continue from Yerington east toward Ely. Together with NV Energy’s existing One Nevada Transmission Line, the projects are intended to create what the utility calls a triangle of transmission across the state.

The idea is straightforward: electricity generated in one part of Nevada can move more easily to another when it is needed. NV Energy says that improves reliability by giving power more than one path to travel.

Greenlink West is already being built. The Bureau of Land Management reported in October that construction was underway along portions of the corridor, including transmission structures, access roads and substation work. NV Energy expects Greenlink West to be in service in May 2027.

One of its key pieces is the Walker River Substation near Yerington, adjacent to NV Energy’s existing Fort Churchill facilities. NV Energy describes Walker River as the largest substation project the company has undertaken.

That location is becoming increasingly important because existing generation, proposed new generation and major transmission lines all meet in the general Yerington-Fort Churchill area.

Greenlink North is the other half of the project. The proposed 235-mile, 525-kV line will extend from the Yerington area toward Ely, crossing rural portions of Lyon, Churchill, Lander, Eureka and White Pine counties. NV Energy plans to begin construction in 2027 and put the line into service by the end of 2028.

Greenlink North is still working through parts of the permitting process. The Bureau of Land Management lists the federal environmental review as ongoing, while the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection opened a public-comment period on a construction-related permit through Nov. 30.

The transmission question has become particularly important in Northern Nevada.

NV Energy executive Shahzad Lateef told the Northern Nevada Business Weekly earlier this year that Northern Nevada currently has no additional transmission import capacity available for new load growth. He said Greenlink West should provide additional capacity into Northern Nevada, with Greenlink North adding further reliability and flexibility once completed.

That helps explain something we have encountered repeatedly during this series.

A power plant can exist somewhere on NV Energy’s system without enough transmission capacity being available to deliver hundreds of additional megawatts to a new industrial customer in Fernley, Storey County or elsewhere. The transmission line has to have room, and the electricity still has to reach the correct substation.

That is why large customers such as Microsoft have been involved in separate proceedings for new high-voltage substations, and why some industrial developers are looking at their own generation while permanent utility infrastructure is built.

Greenlink is frequently discussed alongside Nevada’s recent growth in proposed data-center development, but the project predates the current data-center boom. NV Energy first proposed Greenlink in 2020 and says it was designed to improve statewide reliability, connect renewable-energy areas and create additional transmission capacity.

Data centers and other large industrial customers may use that capacity, but they are not the sole reason the project exists. Greenlink also affects mines, geothermal and solar projects, utilities and communities throughout rural Nevada.

Greenlink is one of the largest infrastructure investments in Nevada. When the Public Utilities Commission approved the projects in 2021, the estimated cost was about $2.5 billion. By NV Energy’s 2024 resource-plan filing, the estimate had risen to approximately $4.2 billion.

Company testimony attributed the increase to expanded project scope, higher labor and material costs, sales taxes and escalation between the original estimate and construction.

Those costs are part of Nevada’s broader discussion about how much transmission is needed, who benefits from it and how those costs should be recovered.

For rural Nevada, Greenlink is more than a line on a utility map.

Transmission towers, substations, access roads and construction activity are being placed across rural counties. At the same time, those lines can provide access to new generating resources and additional electrical capacity that could support mines, manufacturers and other industrial development.

Nevada’s electricity challenge is not simply producing more power. It is producing enough electricity, at the right time, and building a system capable of moving it where it needs to go.

Next in the Powering Nevada series: What happens when the grid reaches the customer — substations, connection agreements and the last mile of delivering industrial power.

The Power Has to Get There

Comments