Squaw Valley Ski Resort is joining forces with Tesla and Liberty Utilities to completely power Olympic Valley with renewable energy. The Olympic Valley Microgrid Project would combine solar and wind energy with battery storage technologies. The energy storage system would be located near Gold Coast, storing up to eight megawatts.
"This is really about proving to everybody in the community, in the region, in the state and the country that we can bring about good things if we put our minds to it," Andy Wirth, President and CEO of Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows.
Liberty Utilities would provide the electricity. It would be stored in Tesla's power packs, which are built just 65 miles away from the ski resort at the Gigafactory.
"When the sun's shining or the wind's blowing, you want to be able to store that energy," Â Greg Sorensen, President of Liberty Utilities Western Region said. "Any excess energy that you have, put it into the batteries, and then you utilize that either at night or when the wind isn't blowing.">
"We just saw this as an inevitable part of the future as everything progressed toward more and more renewable energy," J.B. Straubel, Co-Founder/CTO of Tesla said. "Storage and renewable energy are linked. You can't get to 100 percent renewable energy without having a way to firm that up and to basically ensure that you have that reliability and robustness."
Wirth says 25 percent of Squaw Valley's energy is renewable, reducing its carbon footprint from 19,000 metric tons of carbon for operations to 16,000 metric tons. Once the microgrid is utilized, it will decrease that to 6,000 metric tons.
"The reality is that climate change is real. It's very much upon us, and it will bring increased volatility of weather patterns," Wirth said. "So within that, what do we do about our contributions."
"To bring clean energy here and to help preserve this beautiful environment that we all live in here in Tahoe, it's a good feeling," Sorensen said.
The rest of the carbon emissions would come from skiers who drive to the resort and from diesel-powered snowcats on the mountain. Wirth says he hopes that he will eventually have an electric option on snowcats, since they account for 1,000 metric tons of carbon.
"We've already talked to the two suppliers of snowcats, and we have already pressed them to say 'Get there first. Get those and develop fully-electric-powered snowcats,'" Wirth said.
Price is always an issue when it comes to green energy, but officials say the technology in the microgrid will be both clean and economical.
"It's starting to be the economic argument that says renewable with battery storage is the economical thing to do, and it's the environmental thing to do," Sorensen said.
"It's getting cheaper and cheaper," Straubel said. "We're seeing more customers realizing that it's really quite robust, it's a mature technology, it's ready to deploy."
The project still has to clear some regulatory hurdles, which Wirth expects will happen. The microgrid could be online by December.
