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Sugar Bowl Ski Resort CASE STUDY

Sugar Bowl Ski Resort Case Study

Utility Optimization Software Provider Verdafero Helps Sugar Bowl Ski Resort Analyze Their Sustainability Efforts and Save Money

An industry highly sensitive to climate change, ski resorts around the world are considering actions that may help prolong the long-term availability of winter snow.

In order to gain greater visibility and insight into the effect of these initiatives, the management of Sugar Bowl Resort worked with Verdafero, a software and services provider based in San Francisco, CA dedicated to helping organizations save money through optimization of utility expenses.

As a leader in sustainability Sugar Bowl Resort staff starting using MyVerdafero – Utility Optimization Software Platform in 2009 and immediately had the capability to visualize and navigate important utility metrics across the entire ski resort.

With a ski resort of this size, real-time visibility and reporting on the cost and usage of our many utilities is incredibly important, not just to our day-to-day ski operations, but across our entire resort and organization throughout the year,” said Rebecca Meyerholz, Senior Project Manager at Sugar Bowl Resort.

As an example, with our commitment to sustainability, we started to track our energy usage and accurately compare it year-to-year and season-to-season using MyVerdafero. The last few seasons have been a challenge given the variations in weather and snowfall; the ability to analyze our actual performance based on weather variations between seasons is extremely important when making capital decisions. MyVerdafero now gives us that critical insight.

Alastair Hood, CEO of Verdafero Inc., said, “As government legislation and public opinion drive the need for a more sustainability future and as a market leader in ski resorts, Sugar Bowl Resort now has the unique ability to track, analyze and report their utility usage and cost comparisons in real-time using MyVerdafero. This tool now gives the resort management the ability to analyze, compare and report on all sustainability metrics across the mountain, not just energy but water and waste and fuel.”

As part of their on-going upgrades Verdafero has now implemented carbon footprint reporting into MyVerdafero, thus enabling ski resorts to analyze and report their carbon footprint on a real-time basis. The implementation of the carbon foot printing methodology is a very important addition to Verdafero’s software platform. Ski resort management now has up-to-date, accurate and informative data at their fingertips to make the best financial and sustainable decisions. This is very important for the future of our industry.”

How MyVerdafero Helps Sugar Bowl Resort

Trying to analyze large amounts of electric, gas, water and waste data for a large resort like Sugar Bowl on a monthly basis can be very challenging.

Individual utilities are not consistent with their billing periods. Each utility provider works on a different billing cycle. There may be different utility providers supplying the same resource for the same facility. This all presents the end user with varying degrees of complexity when it comes to analyzing and comparing their actual usage in a meaningful and actionable way.

During our initial discussions with Sugar Bowl Resort they had some very important questions that needed answers:

  1. How are we doing this season compared to last season?
  2. How are we doing compared to the same month last season?
  3. How are we doing this month compared to the same month 3 years ago before we started our energy efficiency upgrade program?
  4. Has the difference in weather affected my usage?
  5. What about ski count over the seasons, does this affect my usage?
  6. Given our usage over the last year what is our carbon footprint?

Now, with the use of MyVerdafero, all these questions can be answered quickly and conveniently from any web connected device. Sugar Bowl Resort now has the ability to track, analyze and report their utility data and carbon footprint simply and easily.

Using the MyVerdafero system they no longer need to dedicate a spreadsheet expert to the task of manually gathering, assembling, analyzing and reporting their usage in a long-hand format. This not only saves significant costs in personal time during the season but they also now have the ability to catch billing errors, equipment failure, and scheduling irregularities quickly and efficiently.

Verdafero Inc. based in San Francisco, CA, is a SaaS (Sustainability-as-a-Service) software and services provider focused on helping organizations save money through optimization of their entire utility expenses, including electric, gas, water, waste and fuel, across their entire organization through the use of their cloud-based Utility Optimization Platform. For more information about MyVerdafero, visit www.verdafero.com, or call Alastair Hood, CEO at (650) 206 2441.

Sugar Bowl Resort is a ski and snowboard area in northern Placer County near Norden, California along the Donner Pass of the Sierra Nevada, approximately 46 mi (74 km) west of Reno, Nevada on Interstate 80, that opened on December 15, 1939. Sugar Bowl Resort is a medium sized ski area in the Lake Tahoe region, and is well known for its long history, significant advanced terrain, high annual snowfall and being one of the closest ski areas to the San Francisco Bay Area. Sugar Bowl’s terrain is 17% Beginner, 45% Intermediate and 38% Advanced. For more information about the resort, visit http://www.sugarbowl.com, or call (530) 426-9000.

Contacts

Alastair Hood
Verdafero Inc. (650) 206 2441
Alastair@verdafero.com

Rebecca Meyerholz
Sugar Bowl Resort.
(530) 426 6709
rmeyerholz@sugarbowl.com

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