Snowmass puts a battery where a diesel generator used to be

A backup-power system at Elk Camp is designed to help clear the chairlift during outages—and send stored electricity back to the grid when the lift is idle. The project could offer resorts a new way to combine operational resilience with energy management.

At Snowmass, an outage no longer necessarily means turning to a diesel generator to move the Elk Camp chairlift. A newly installed battery system is intended to provide backup power if the lift’s regular electricity supply fails. Aspen Snowmass describes it as the world’s first battery-backed chairlift, replacing a diesel generator it says produced roughly 144 tons of carbon emissions annually.

The system has a second role when the lift is not running: Holy Cross Energy, the local utility, can draw on stored power to help meet periods of high demand. In effect, the battery is meant to serve both as emergency infrastructure for the resort and as a flexible resource for the grid.

That dual use is the project’s most consequential feature. Backup equipment at a ski lift is not simply about keeping operations convenient; it is part of how operators respond to a loss of power while passengers are on the lift. Replacing a diesel generator with a battery changes the energy source for that contingency, while the utility arrangement puts the equipment to work outside lift hours. The installation follows the opening of the new Elk Camp high-speed six-passenger chairlift in the 2025–26 season.

Aspen Snowmass says the former generator’s emissions figure is about 144 tons a year. That should be understood as the resort’s estimate for the replaced generator, not as a published measurement of the battery’s overall climate impact. The public reports reviewed do not specify the battery’s energy-storage capacity, how long it can support the lift during an outage, or the project’s cost—details that would help other resorts assess whether the approach can be replicated.

The project also lands amid broader interest in energy storage at ski areas, though not every application is alike. A proposed battery system at Berkshire East in Massachusetts, for example, is aimed at managing electricity demand from snowmaking—an energy-intensive operation—rather than replacing emergency power for a lift. Snowmass offers a more focused case: using storage to replace diesel backup while also making the asset useful to the local grid.

Whether that model becomes common will depend on practical questions as much as ambition: system cost, reliability under outage conditions, and how much power can be made available to the utility without compromising the lift’s backup needs. For now, Elk Camp is a working demonstration of how a single battery can be designed for two jobs—keeping mountain infrastructure prepared for an outage and supporting the grid when the chairlift is idle.