During the summer of 2007, Myron Zucker, Inc. was approached to apply power factor correction capacitors to the snow making equipment of a ski slope located in eastern Pennsylvania. The project was intended to provide the end-user with an economical solution for increasing productivity by running more snow making guns on their ski slope without having to invest a large amount of money in new power distribution equipment or larger transformers.

After reviewing the project and the equipment that could be treated, MZI decided that the best approach would be an at-the-load method which would put the capacitors as close to the motors as possible. This would offer the benefit of power factor correction as well as reduction in line losses since the conductors for the snow making guns are very long and waste a lot of energy in heat losses.

The decision was made to mount the capacitors inside the existing equipment enclosures using our Traymount® series capacitor. This allowed for simple installation which was performed along with the annual PM of the snow guns. A total of (120) individual capacitors were installed to add 785kVAr of reactive power to the system.

The end result was very satisfactory for the end user. The added capacitors increased their power factor on the ski slope from around 80% to a point that never fell below 92% for the entire 2007/2008 ski season. It eliminated a power factor penalty from their utility provider. They witnessed an average of 4amps reduction per snow gun. They were also able to increase their snow making productivity by expanding from 100 snow guns to 120 snow guns due to increased kVA from their existing transformer, a result of the added reactive power from the capacitors.