SAM Magazine—Snowbird, Utah, June 29, 2021—Snowbird can now meet up to 100 percent of the resort's electrical power needs through its new onsite Snowbird Power Systems. The system, currently in its testing phase, allows the resort to make its own power, vastly reducing Snowbird's dependence on the traditional electrical grid and that grid’s coal-fired contributions to global warming. 

At the heart of the system is a new 5.3 megawatt cogeneration facility—unique among resorts in North America—that replaces an older, more limited one installed in 1986. Cogeneration facilities produce electricity and other energy, primarily heat, jointly. Snowbird’s installation utilizes three Caterpillar natural gas generator sets to supply electrical power and recycles the heat created from power production to warm the resort's buildings and water. The updated cogeneration facility also includes rooftop solar panels to augment the gas generators.

Snowbird Power Systems will meet nearly all of the energy needs of the entire resort, including The Cliff Lodge, Snowbird Center, The Aerial Tram, and the area's chairlifts. Snowbird's original cogeneration plant was limited to supplying the majority of the power needs for The Cliff Lodge and east village and warming the building and water at The Cliff Lodge.

The new system increases energy efficiency, too. In a traditional power plant, according to Snowbird, roughly 60 to 70 percent of the energy used to generate electricity is wasted as heat. By recovering that heat and using it to warm buildings and water, the energy loss is reduced to 15 to 20 percent, shrinking Snowbird's environmental impact.

“Snowbird Power Systems allows us to save 62,000 dekatherms of natural gas a year—the equivalent of removing the carbon dioxide emissions from burning over 4 million pounds of coal,” said Snowbird president and GM Dave Fields. With that system, “we have also reinforced Snowbird’s Play Forever corporate responsibility commitment to the environment," he added.

Other successful Play Forever initiatives include a glass recycling program, a new composting program, extensive work to protect the Little Cottonwood Canyon watershed, and the resort’s Buy A Pass, Plant a Tree program.