HOMER Energy Partner Schneider Electric provided a microgrid solution for Bear Creek Mountain Resort and Conference Center that expanded the resort’s power capabilities without building new infrastructure. Bear Creek Resort, located in a remote mountainous area of Pennsylvania, is severely limited by how much power the local utility can deliver. The resort sits at the end of a utility power line and found that its electrical demand began to exceed the capabilities provided by the utility grid.
“We have a 5 megavolt amperes (MVA) cap on our incoming power from the utility, and anything more than that will cook the fuses on the utilities’ power lines down the road,” says Dustin Yeager, mountain electrician for Bear Creek. “As we continued to grow, we had massive new power requirements – mostly related to our snowmaking equipment – that we couldn’t keep under our 5 MVA cap.”
A ski resort requires highly reliable power to operate all its ski lifts, snow guns, and facilities. To meet their growing needs, Bear Creek was faced with the prospect of upgrading the utility lines, which would be costly. Instead, they added Schneider Electric’s microgrid and advanced power control solution to their existing backup generators. The controller allowed the resort to configure the six existing generators into a grid-connected microgrid, having the generators provide extra power when their electrical demand exceeded the grid’s capabilities.
“It was a case of reusing existing infrastructure and adding a level of control that wasn’t there before. Bear Creek was able to get additional financial benefit without additional infrastructure costs,” said James Lee, national solutions sales engineer at Schneider Electric.
In addition, the microgrid allows Bear Creek to participate in the utility’s demand response program:
“When the grid is under strain, the utility sends a signal to the resort’s system, asking it to reduce demand. The microgrid controller shifts load over to the back-up generators. Bear Creek receives financial payment from the utility for its participation in the demand response program. Those payments have ranged from $40,000 to over $100,000 annually, and are made possible because of Schneider Electric’s PowerLogic.
Read more at http://se-enable.com/wp-content/uploads/Bear-Creek_Case-Study_Digital.pdf.