History came to the Massachusetts town of Hancock last August. And, as it so often happens, dollars and cents provided the impetus.

By Dan Rafter

Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, on August 3, flipped the switch on its $3.9 million 1.5-MW wind turbine. Once the turbine’s 123-foot blades started spinning, the New England resort officially became the first private ski area in North America to generate its own onsite power. The ski resort’s founders and operators have long been committed to running a “green” operation: Jiminy Peak officials order regular energy audits. On an annual basis, they review their resort’s electrical equipment to determine if they can make any possible upgrades or improvements to boost the efficiency of it. According to resort officials, these efforts have paid off: Jiminy Peak, they say, consumes on an annual basis 1 million kWhs-less energy than the resort otherwise would without its efforts to boost its energy efficiency.

Even with these efforts, though, resort officials were stunned three years ago after completing an in-depth analysis of how much energy Jiminy Peak consumed. The study considered all energy costs: propane, fuel, oil, gasoline, and electricity.

The conclusion? The resort was still an energy hog, meaning big costs.

“What started our project to install a wind turbine here?” says James VanDyke, vice president of environmental sustainability at Jiminy Peak. “In the most simplistic terms, we had come to the realization that our energy costs had doubled in three years.”

The costs became especially bad in the winter. Like all ski resorts, Jiminy Peak manufactures snow, powers extensive lighting deep into the night, and operates multiple chairlifts. This all consumes massive amounts of energy. Resort officials knew they needed relief. Wind power could provide it. “How can we control our destiny when it comes to energy costs?” VanDyke says. “That was the big question. We knew that the cost of our power was still going to escalate. We had dabbled around before with geothermal energy. Solar power didn’t make much sense for us. But, wind power? That did make sense.”

That was three years ago. The drive to get that wind power to Jiminy Peak finally ended last summer.

The turbine, which sits atop a 253-foot tower, will generate about 4.6-million kWh of power annually. This is a significant amount: Jiminy Peak consumes about 7.5-million kWh of energy every year. The combination of wind power and the resort’s existing conservation efforts will reduce Jiminy Peak’s energy costs by 49.4% on an annual basis. Resort officials expect the turbine to pay for itself after seven years. When this period ends, the resort, which can only use 2.3 million kWh of turbine-generated power onsite, will sell a portion of this power back to its public utility. The utility, Massachusetts’ National Grid, will pay the resort 12 cents for every kilowatt-hour it purchases.

This is all good news for Jiminy Peak officials. The resort’s Zephyr turbine, manufactured by GE Energy (GE) will not only reduce Jiminy Peak’s reliance on outside energy sources; it will also generate income for the mountain vacation spot.

For resort officials, though, the turbine is only a portion of a larger energy-efficiency program at Jiminy Peak. “Although the wind turbine is up and running, we’re not done yet,” says Brian Fairbank, president and chief executive officer of Jiminy Peak, in a resort press release. “While this is a giant step forward to helping to preserve the environment, Jiminy Peak will continue to improve upon its energy conservation and continue to strive to take better care of the mountain ecosystem.”

While the turbines are now turning at Jiminy Peak, getting wind power to the resort was no easy task. It took three years of planning, negotiations, and a false start or two to reach that August day when VanDyke flipped the switch of the Zephyr wind turbine.

Searching for a Boost
Jiminy Peak had long been taking measures to lower its energy consumption, taking advantage of several conservation rebates offered through the National Grid public utility. The problem was, these efforts weren’t making a large enough dent in Jiminy Peak’s energy bills. “We’d already picked the readily accessible, low-lying fruit,” VanDyke says. “We’d also looked at some other measures and projects that didn’t make financial sense for us. We needed to look into
something else.”

The ski resort’s peak electrical use occurs during the winter, when Jiminy Peak uses 36 4,000-horsepower motors to generate snow for about 1,000 hours during the season. Because these motors are running full-blast for such a relatively short chunk of the year, it doesn’t make economic sense for resort officials to spend the money to replace them with more efficient versions.

For the same reason, it made little economic sense for the resort to go with the variable speed DC drives for the motors, either. “They run for such a short period of time; it just didn’t make sense,” VanDyke says. “If we were a manufacturing operation, and we were running them all the time, that would change the economics. But ski resorts are a unique business. Our power needs are unique.”

The goal at Jiminy Peak was simple: Resort officials wanted to reduce its electricity costs in a way that made sense. By doing this, resort operators say, they could then have the financial flexibility to either remain competitive, or, in the best-case scenario, gain a competitive advantage over the other like-sized ski resorts that dot the northeastern portion of the US.

The one form of onsite power that met this goal? Wind power.

Armed with this knowledge, the resort’s officials contacted Ontario, NY–based Sustainable Energy Development, a firm that offers consulting services to property owners interested in entering the US wind-energy market.

For the staffers at Sustainable Energy Development, the chance to work on a potentially historic project proved to be a strong lure. “You hear about ski resorts buying renewable energy credits all the time,” says Dave Strong, project manager with Sustainable Energy Development. “But, you never hear about them actually putting in wind turbines.”

The project was not only an intriguing one, but a challenging one too. Sustainable Energy would have to guide Jiminy Peak through the traditionally complicated process of qualifying for and installing their turbine, a process that includes the challenges of finding an appropriate site for a wind turbine, choosing the right turbine, analyzing the resort’s energy needs, applying for permits, winning the approval of all necessary government bodies, and currying favor with a public that sometimes has a negative view toward wind towers. But, Sustainable Energy Development also had to face one unique challenge: How could the resort successfully transport huge turbine blades and a more than 250-foot tower, up a winding, 2.3-mile access road that snakes its way around a mountain perimeter?

“The construction logistics and transportation logistics were definitely unique,” Strong says. “One of the biggest pieces of the job was figuring out how to get the parts from point ‘A’ to point ‘B,’ with ‘A’ being the parking lot at the base of the mountain, and ‘B’ being the staging area for the turbine. This was definitely a very tough project. It required a lot of learning going on all across the board. We were dealing with the first project of its kind.”

Unique Challenges
Sustainable Energy Development started its relationship with Jiminy Peak the way it starts work with each of its clients: It educated the resort’s operators on wind power and how turbines work. This meant first determining if enough wind blew across the mountain resort to make wind turbines a feasible option. “Is there enough wind to even take the next step?” Strong asks. “That’s the first question you have to answer,” he says.

Sustainable Energy hired Albany, NY–based AWS Truewind to study wind patterns at the resort. The company drew up a wind map, and Sustainable Energy used it to determine the best locations—based on the speed, frequency, and strength of winds—for the turbine.

Sustainable Energy then helped Jiminy Peak officials determine how large of a wind turbine the resort needed. While doing this, the company formulated reasonable predictions for how much energy wind turbines of different sizes would produce at certain times of the year, based on the amount of wind that traditionally blew across the resort’s property during these periods.

Resort officials also had to decide whether to install one large turbine or several smaller ones. Jiminy Peak operators decided on the one turbine, because it would take up less space on the mountain and would be less of an eyesore than an entire field of turbines.

Each of Sustainable Energy’s clients has its own unique set of challenges and questions to consider when deciding if wind power makes sense. Jiminy Peak was no different. “The resort uses a lot of electricity in making snow in the wintertime,” Strong says. “That accounts for a large portion of its energy needs. What implications does that have on the resort needing to purchase from the utility grid? When will this wind turbine offset the need to purchase from the utility? There is a certain amount of value that the resort gets from saving a kilowatt hour. Then there is a different amount of money it gets when it overproduces with the turbine and sells some of that energy back to the utility. There will be times during the summer when the resort produces more than it is using. We had to figure out basically how much of the time that will be happening.”

The next step is one that property owners often dread: applying for permits. “The permitting is always quite an adventure,” Strong says. “You have to work with local, state, and federal agencies. Then you have to deal with various organizations throughout the area. The big one you have to deal with is the utility. All of the information about the equipment you are using, how much energy you’ll be generating, [and] how the resort will be using the energy—it all has to be provided to the utility. The utility then does its own study and comes back with questions. It’s a lengthy, complex process.”

In Jiminy Peak’s case, resort officials faced another challenge when it came to earning approval from government officials: The resort had selected two appropriate sites for the turbine. Unfortunately, the sites each stood in separate municipalities. Each municipality had its own permitting rules.

Jiminy Peak officials’ preferred sites sat in the municipalities of Lanesboro and Hancock, MA. To be safe, the resort’s operators met with government officials in both communities. This took time, but the meetings were successful. Both Hancock and Lanesboro gave their tentative approvals to the resort’s plans. “We received green lights to proceed from both,” VanDyke says. “No one saw any problems with being able to grant us permits for this project.”

Eventually, the resort chose the Hancock site, which provided the ideal amount of wind. Hancock’s permitting process was also less involved than the procedure required by Lanesboro.

Though the resort planned to install just one turbine, its operators performed all the studies required by developers planning entire wind farms. This included studies determining the impact on any endangered species in the area, and others that reported on potential dangers to birds, bats, and other avian life. Jiminy Peak wasn’t required to conduct all these studies, and the reports did take time and money. But, the benefits of running the studies far outweighed the negatives, VanDyke says. “We did all this so that we could all look each other in the eye and say, ‘This is a very good project.’ Nobody can throw any darts at us for not completing a critical piece of information. They can’t say, ‘Oh, you are killing birds. You are building in an endangered species area.’ We knew, on all those fronts, that we were not.”

Complications
After performing the studies, meeting with governmental officials, and finding the ideal site, Jiminy Peak was ready to order its wind turbines. That is when complications ensued. Originally, resort officials had hoped to have their wind turbine running by August 2006. Problem was, when Jiminy Peak sent out its requests for proposals for a three-quarters to 1-MW turbine to three companies, the results were less than encouraging.

One company didn’t respond; the second said it couldn’t provide a wind turbine that year but could provide one in three years; and the third refused Jiminy’s offer, although did say it would consider building 10 turbines if the resort ever expanded its project.

This disheartening response spelled an end to the resort’s 2006 deadline. “We are a ski resort,” VanDyke says. “Trying to build in the winter time is practically impossible. The roadways we are using are existing trails, so we couldn’t do that. The driest time of the year is the summer—July and August. If we are building this, we’d be hauling umpteen tons of equipment up a mountain with grades of 20 to 25 percent. We need good weather.”

Faced with a missed deadline, resort officials rethought their plans. Jiminy Peak changed its request to a 1.5-MW turbine. Resort officials then approached GE. This time, their plans received a favorable response. Part of the reason for this was that Jiminy Peak had already performed extensive studies for its site. This made GE’s decision easier.

The project also added a new dimension to GE’s wind program: The company usually sold hundreds of turbines at a time to large developers. In this case, though, GE would be selling just one turbine to a relatively small landholder. This was a new step for the energy giant. “I think that GE saw that we were a very serious customer,” VanDyke says. “They were impressed with the knowledge we were already bringing to the project.”

GE agreed to deliver the 1.5-MW turbine at the end of June 2007. This gave Jiminy Peak officials time to find contractors, who would transport the equipment from the base area to the turbine site and then install the massive pieces of equipment.

Jiminy had an advantage here: Construction crews had already installed the infrastructure, including the turbine’s base and the conduits for the project’s electric wires, in preparation for its original 2006 deadline for the turbine.

A Construction Challenge
The biggest challenge in installing the turbine was in getting the equipment up a 2.3-mile access road to the project’s staging area. The road was steep and narrow. The turbine pieces were anything but narrow. Each of the turbine’s three blades measured 123 feet. The tower, of course, was 253-feet tall. The entire structure weighs 155 tons. Construction crews not only had to transport these pieces up the mountain, they also had to bring up the separate pieces of the crane that they would use to install the turbine.

In all, crews moved 26 tractor-trailer loads up the mountain. The project required the efforts of nine construction companies. Crews, though, did have good luck. The weather was perfect. Workers transported and installed the turbine without incident. So far, the turbine has been a success. August is the lightest wind month at Jiminy Peak. Still, the turbine generated 200,000 kWhs of electricity during it. This power was converted to 13,800 V and ran 4,000 feet down the mountain in a buried conduit.

For Sustainable Energy Development, the Jiminy Peak project is just one more example of the growth of the wind-energy industry. 

“We’re seeing more and more interest in wind energy,” Strong says. “It took us three years at Jiminy Peak. These projects usually don’t go quickly. But, they are becoming more common. I think we’ll be seeing more of these projects in the future.” 

Dan Rafter is a technical writer based in IL.

DE - May/June 2008