ILF Consulting Engineers: Energy - Year-Round Use Of Snowmaking Systems

Based on decades of experience in the areas of hydropower and alpine technology, ILF Consulting Engineers offers efficient solutions to use the existing infrastructure for technical snowmaking to generate and store energy.

In recent years, the topic of saving energy has become more and more present and has of course also found its way into the ski industry. For reasons of cost and environmental protection, however, new sustainable energy projects, especially with regard to hydropower, are difficult to implement, so that the focus is increasingly placed on using the existing infrastructure in the ski areas more effectively. In this context, the secondary use of snow-making systems plays a central role.

Most of the ski areas already have a well-developed infrastructure. Storage ponds, for example, are connected to one another by a system of pipes via pumping stations. Essential components for energy generation or energy storage by hydropower are therefore already available. However, the primarily intended use of this infrastructure is limited to just a few weeks or months a year.

This offers a good starting point to use the full technical capacity of the system all year round.

ILF Consulting Engineers has the experience and knowledge in both areas, be it for alpine technology or hydropower, to develop an interface-free solution based on a needs analysis without conflicts of use. You can read about the process of this inventory analysis in the box.

The water supply of the reservoirs can be interesting for a secondary use. Often only a manageable intervention is necessary to use the stock optimally all year round. ILF finds the project-specific technical equipment that meets the usage requirements of the ski area. A second use of components of a snowmaking system offers the increasingly important advantage of security of supply. Even small but safe energy gains can be of great functional importance. The help to reduce emissions and the economic added value also speak for a possible second use of snowmaking systems.

pumped storage power plants

The developments in the energy sector drastically show the consequences of being dependent on third parties. The energetic potential for the mountain railways is virtually "on the doorstep". Ideally, a combination of self-generated renewable electricity (in addition to photovoltaic systems or wind turbines) and the secondary use of storage ponds as energy storage would come a big step closer to the desired electricity self-sufficiency. The idea behind it is to temporarily store the excess electricity generated by renewable energies in the form of potential energy. The water is pumped into the reservoir by electrically driven pumps so that it can later be used to drive turbines to generate electricity. Basically there is a lower and an upper basin, between which the water is shifted up and down, whereby the lower reservoir can be an artificial reservoir as well as a natural lake or a flowing water. In the simplest case, electricity can be generated by operating the pumps in the opposite direction (turbine operation) or by separate turbines, for which a wide variety of designs and sizes are possible depending on the operating conditions.

Thanks to its numerous specialist departments, depending on the size of the project, ILF can bundle its competencies as a "one-stop shop" provider and, depending on the project size and project phase, can fall back on the necessary experts in the in-house departments. Thus, a project can be fully accompanied and realized from the idea to implementation.