Resursanvändning vid snötillverkning : En jämförelse av energi- och vattenförbrukningen vid snötillverkning med olika snökanoner

Artificial snow resists wind, water and temperature changes better than natural snow and is increasingly used as a complement when natural snow is not enough. In snowmaking, water and energy resources are needed which are limited by the costs as well as regulations depending on where production takes place. Large quantities of water are often retrieved from lakes and then distributed over a concentrated area which disturb nearby ecosystems. Östersund ski stadium has since 2008 been storing artificial snow during summer in order to put it out early in the season, and offer both amateurs and professionals a training and competition venue from 1 November each year. With scarce resources of snow, the professional races have been possible to carry through, while exercising amateurs have been down prioritized with a delayed opening. The study's main purpose has been to investigate whether a change to another snowmaking model could improve the efficiency of snow production, especially considering that the average temperature in Jämtland is expected to increase, and therefore also increasing the use of resources. The snowmaking machine models studied has been Areco Super Snow and SMI Super Puma, both of which are fan driven snow guns powered with a total output of about 24 kW. The result shows that the snow gun SMI Super Puma can increase the efficiency of snow production, thereby reducing water and energy consumption at the ski stadium. This opens possibilities for more snow to be stored and therefore enable the objective of offering cross country trails early in the season. However, the water and energy consumption in the current state is not assessed to be particularly large in comparison to Östersund municipality's total production of drinking water and energy consumption during the winter months of December to March and the stored snow piles are not considered an environmental problem