Jiminy Peak

INTRODUCTION

Brian Fairbank, president and CEO of Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, is worried about energy costs. Primarily a ski resort, Jiminy Peak’s business is very energy-intensive, mainly because most of the winter snow is manufactured by machines that run on electricity. Strong conservation campaigns over the years have reduced energy consumption by 25 percent, but the resort still consumes about 7.5 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year, with about 60 percent used during the peak winter months. Last year, electricity costs were about $0.11 per kWh, but this season, the cost skyrocketed to $0.16 per kWh – an increase of almost 50 percent. Even before the electricity cost increase, Jiminy Peak had tried to operate as efficiently as possible to minimize its electricity consumption. As examples, 1,800 new fluorescent bulbs were installed in the lodge, replacing incandescent bulbs; high-efficiency lights had been installed on the ski runs that automatically dim to half wattage during night maintenance work; half of the snowmaking system had been converted to zero-energy gravity-feed. Jiminy Peak was even a test site for the development of revolutionary new high-efficiency “guns” for the snowmaking machines. This new snowmaking technology uses 40 percent less electricity than the older version. In the 1990s, the resort won an energy conservation recognition award from Massachusetts Electric for saving over one million kWh of electricity from its improvements in snowmaking, lighting, and elsewhere. But there is only so much Jiminy Peak is able to achieve in energy conservation with its existing facilities and still offer high quality recreational services. Fairbank has realized that a more ambitious energy reduction initiative is needed, and so he and resort managers are now considering harnessing an abundant renewable green resource readily available to the mountain resort: wind power.

THE WIND TURBINE PROJECT PROPOSAL

Fairbank has been in the...