Steamboat Springs Geothermal Plant

Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.

Lower Steamboat Springs Geothermal Plant


Last week on the way home from the GRC annual meeting, we decided to take a side trip that would take us by the Lower Steamboat Springs Geothermal plant operated by Ormat. The view above is courtesy of Google Maps, the view below was snapped from US 395 about 10 miles south of Reno, Nevada. The entire Steamboat Springs complex (4 plants, Upper and Lower Steamboat Springs) has a nameplate capacity of just over 64 MW.

View of plant from US 395 at ground level

Preparing for snow in 2057

By Tom Ross

Steamboat Springs — The blue concrete pipe stacked around the base of the Steamboat Ski Area this week has to do with the push to make snow not only later this month, but also 50 years into the future.

Ski area spokesman Mike Lane said construction crews working on the re-grading of the Headwall trail are busy installing new snowmaking pipelines made by the North American division of an Austrian company, Tiroler Rohren.

Steamboat first installed the state-of-the-art blue piping last year on the Vogue ski run.

“It’s worked really well for us,” Lane said. “It’s supposed to last 50 years — twice as long as other products.”

Colorado Ski Country USA announced this week that Loveland and Arapahoe Basin ski areas already have begun snowmaking operations in the annual race to see who can open first in October. Steamboat is set to open Nov. 21 with the annual Scholarship Day to benefit the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. The ski area typically begins making snow in late October when overnight temperatures consistently dip into the teens, Lane said. He added that construction on Headwall is on schedule to meet that timeframe, as part of $16 million in capital improvements at Steamboat this year.

“They’ll be working on the new pipe for another week to 10 days, and when they get that done, they’ll be ready to pressurize the system and get started,” weather permitting, Lane said.

In 2006, Steamboat began making snow Oct. 26, in the midst of a series of frigid snowstorms that swept across Northwest Colorado.

The installation of new snowmaking lines is just part of the work taking place at the base of the ski area this week.

Lane said crews are grading the site of the lower terminal for the new Christie Peak Express high-speed, six-person chairlift, before pouring concrete later this week or early next week.

Concrete for the Christie Express mid-station and upper terminal already has been poured.

A large earth scraper is pushing topsoil to the upper portion of Headwall this week while dirt is being piled around large concrete footers for the towers of the relocated Preview chairlift.

“They’re making a ton of progress this week,” Lane said. “We have really good people who have a lot of experience working together and a lot of knowledge.”