SNOWFARM 3000

The Snow Farming is a way of conservation of the snow during the Summer season with the aim to reuse it the following winter.

Since few years the town of Livigno accumulates a huge snow-pile near the villlage (1800 meters over the sea level) in order to use the snow for the building of a cross-country ski track during the month of October.

During this Summer, also Carosello 3000 is making a snow-farming test at high altitude (2800 meters over the sea level). Once the knowledge is acquired, there will be the opportunity to repeat the project in a larger scale with the goal of giving an accurate opening date to the tourist, and of course, save a great amount of energy lowering the usage of the snow-making system.

At the end of the last Winter season, a snow-pile of 10.000 cube meters has been accumulated at the top of the mountain after the destruction of the structures of the snow-park.

After that, the snow-bank has been covered with different layers: a protective with sheet at first, than two layers of wool-wood used to protect the snow from heat insulation, and at the end one more white sheet with the capacity to reflect the sunlight.

Using digital simulations, considering the average temperatures registered in during the last 5 Summers, the melting expected during the whole Summer is around the 20% of the total volume of the snow-pile. This means that the saved 7500 cube meters can be used to fill the slopes having at the same time a considerable power saving.

The project Snow Farm 3000 is part of a larger energy saving strategy applied by Carosello 3000 at its snow making and distribution system. During the last years was already made a digital map of the entire Mountain that, together with high-precision satellite devices installed on each snow-cats, gives a real time data of the snow-depth on the slopes. Analysing the geo-data is now possible to see the areas with low snow level and fill them with a targeted use of the snow-making system.

The project Snow Farm 3000 has been made in cooperation with the Livigno Touristic Office and Alpsolut, a start-up wich study the behaviour of the snow with the goal to offer forecast and safety solutions to the public and the resorts.

SAVING THE SNOW DURING THE SUMMER – HERE THE RESULTS

DECEMBER 2022 UPDATE

During the last week of November, the snow pile has been freed from the three layers of coverage and both the sheets and the wool-wood carpets has been stored for future use.

The measurements have highlighted a 26% of melting of the mass of snow that has been accumulated during last Spring. This percentage is only a bit higher from the results digital simulation made by Alpsolut, in the event of the second warmest Summer in the last 100 years (read the article on Copernicus).

In the last weeks the snow that has been saved with the snow-farming process has been used in part to caver the slope Baby and in part to build the first freestyle structures of the snowpark. Thanks to this, The Beach has been opened almost two weeks before than in previous seasons.

The Snowfarm 3000 project turned out to be a very effective test in many different ways: the data acquisition for the energy saving program, the increasing of an operative know-how and the feasibility study for a larger scale snow-farming project.