Nessy Zero E

Based on the project NESSy in which a new and energy efficient snow lance was developed, the following project pursues the development of a zero energy snow lance that takes the all the required energy to make snow completely from the surrounding. The project, supplied of the CTI (Commission for Technology and Innovation), is running in cooperation with the company Bächler Top Track AG and the Institute for Thermo- and Fluid- Engineering of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.

Compressed air from water pressure

The basic idea is to produce the compressed air, which is essential for technical snow making, not with compressors but to take the required energy from the available water pressure. The entire power consumption as well as the infrastructure to provide compressed air can be saved. As long as the water pressure is exclusively generated by the potential energy of a higher located reservoir lake (no pumping up of water), no electricity at all is necessary for snow making. Beyond the total reduction of power consumption, the achievement of best snow quality is the second goal of this R&D work.

Process understanding by field tests, climate wind tunnel and modelling

Methods that had already been developed in the first NESSy project were extended and optimized. Especially the understanding of atomization, the freezing and exchange process in the snow cloud could be deepened by field testing, measurements in the climate wind tunnel and by detailed theoretical modelling.