Ski Area Energy Awareness
Making our own snow is what gives Massanutten Resort consistent winters, ensuring that we have snow coverage from December to March, since we unfortunately cannot rely on natural snowfall. The snowmaking process uses a lot of energy, so we have focused on the following projects to reduce our energy use in our snowmaking operations:
Water conservation: Virginia winters are unreliable for fresh snowfall. In order to have a consistent ski/snowboard season, we rely on snowmaking. This requires lots of water, so we have created a system where we collect as much rainwater and runoff as possible to use in the snowmaking process. Qual Run Creek, Woodstone Golf Pond, and Painters Pond are used for snowmaking.
Low energy snow guns: With our ski area expansion over the past three years, we have added over 150 HKD low energy snow guns and 40 fully automatic fans to make snow on the new slopes.
LED Lighting: All of the lights on our ski area are being transitioned to LED, helping make our night skiing more energy efficient. When all of the metal halide lights have been swapped with LED lights, it will save us about 41,000 kWh per year.
Recycling Used Motor Oil: Using the used motor oil for our waste oil heating furnace that is used to heat the snowmaking maintenance building in winter.
