“We offer 100% security in case of snow,” says Antti Lauslahti, CEO of Snow Secure, proudly. “Any ski resort can start the season on a specific date.”
He adds that the system has worked well even when summer heat waves push temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Under the blankets, temperatures do not exceed about 1 or 2 degrees Celsius. Snow Secure and its customers can check that their ice reserves are kept fresh thanks to real-time temperature sensors.
Some snow melting is inevitable during the summer months, but Lauslahti says his company aims to ensure losses do not exceed 30 percent of the original amount. Mustonen has observed this level of performance at Levi. For now, the approach seems resilient even in the face of increasingly hot European summers. “We have not yet seen the temperature at which it would completely melt,” Lauslahti says.
It’s not just ski resorts that can make use of stored snow. One of Snow Secure’s clients is a wood processing plant. There, staff store large pieces of wood under a thick layer of snow covered with blankets. This way, the wood is prevented from drying out too much in summer and remains fresh and easy to cut, says Lauslahti.
Elizabeth Burakowski of the University of New Hampshire says that overall, snow storage is “a great strategy to address the uncertainty we have when we live in a rapidly warming climate.” She adds that ski resorts should consider using electric snow groomers to reduce emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
Snow Secure is keen to promote its blanket system, but there is another way to cover a large pile of snow and insulate it for months. It has been used for centuriesInstead, you can simply spread sawdust or wood chips over the snow.
“It’s an elegant technology,” says Kjell Skogsberg, who works in the renewable energy sector. “It’s really reliable and simple.”
In 2001, Skogsberg and a colleague published An article about a snow storage system The project was designed for a hospital in Sundsvall, eastern Sweden. “It’s like a pit with a slightly sloping bottom where the snow is poured,” he explains. The snow is covered with a 200-millimetre-thick layer of wood chips to prevent it from melting too quickly. Then, during the summer, the melted water flows gently into an outlet in the bottom corner of the pit, passing through filters that remove sand or dirt, and finally the cold water is directed to a heat exchanger. This helps reduce the temperature of a separate water flow that is pumped through the hospital’s cooling system.
“This is used for air conditioning and also for process cooling, such as X-ray machines,” Skogsberg explains. The system is still in use today, he adds, and can fully cover the energy demand for summer cooling at the hospital, which, at 1 gigawatt hour for the period from May to August, is significant. Skogsberg is currently negotiating with an energy company that could build a version of the technology for a district cooling system. Airports, which have plenty of outdoor space that could also be used to store snow, could also find this approach useful, Skogsberg suggests.