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For such a basic and abundant substance, air sure can be expensive. Just ask any snowmaker at a sizeable resort, where electricity costs to blow snow typically run in the hundreds of thousands, maybe more. That is why the relatively recent trend toward low-efficiency snowmaking guns, many producing snow at less than 50 cubic feet of air per minute, has been a godsend.

But nowhere has it been more of a godsend than in Vermont, where last year Efficiency Vermont came to the aid of the state’s ski industry by subsidizing what it called the Great (Snow) Gun Round-up. The publicly funded energy-saving entity offered Vermont ski areas rebates as high as 75 percent to purchase new, low-energy guns in exchange for old-school air hogs. As Kelly Pawlak, Mount Snow’s general manager, put it, buying into the gun-swap program “was a no-brainer.”

Almost all of Vermont’s 17 alpine ski areas jumped on board the round-up train after it was officially set into motion last May, with the end of the year being the deadline. To qualify, areas had to swap old guns for new guns at a 10-8 ratio at minimum. In other words, if you turned over 80 guns to Efficiency Vermont to be hauled off as scrap metal, you could buy 100 low-e guns at significantly reduced prices, thanks to EV’s financial incentives.

Efficiency Vermont was created in 1999, under appointment by the Vermont Public Service Board, to help businesses and individuals in the state reduce their energy use and thus their energy costs. With the ski industry being perhaps the biggest consumer of energy in the state, and with snowmaking representing the biggest share of that consumption, snowmaking was an obvious target. According to an EV spokesperson, Efficiency Vermont had been working with the ski industry on snow-gun technology for more than seven years, but the last two have seen a significant ramping up of gun testing and savings analyses.

In Search of Efficiency

Efficiency Vermont, using a portable test platform that it moved from resort to resort, tested a variety of guns to choose the 16 qualifying models, based primarily on “where their performance metrics were per gun in terms of consumed air,” according to an EV spokesperson. Price was also a criterion. The rebates ranged from $500 to $4,000 per gun (see box at end of article), depending on a gun’s price and its air-water ratio.

Many resorts also conducted their own independent tests to verify manufacturers’ claimed cfm ratings. “We tested snow guns on site during real-time conditions as well as off site in the summer at a ‘cold’ testing facility,” says Jeff Temple, Killington’s director of operations. Peak Resorts, Mount Snow’s owner, did most of its testing at Wildcat, N.H.

The efficiency gains were, in many cases, eye-opening. Killington, for example, bought 303 Snow Logic Dual Vector 4 tower and sled guns, set to run at 8 cfm using the nozzle configuration Killington chose. The resort also purchased 36 Techno Alpin Evo towers with an air flow of 20 cfm. Those guns replaced in-house K3000 guns operating at 400 cfm in optimal conditions.

Measuring efficiency: Killington replaced hundreds of its aging, in-house K3000 guns, running at 400 cfm, with Snow Logic Dual Vector 4 tower and sled guns (below), running at 8 cfm..

While EV’s incentive program maximized rebates according to air-flow efficiency, some Vermont resorts still retained some less efficient models in their fleet, especially for use in marginal conditions. Killington, for example, bolstered its fleet with seven Ratnik Baby Snow Giant 2 towers and 50 Ratnik Baby Snow Giant 2 portable guns with airflow rates of 200 to 350 cfm. The rebate for those guns was just an eighth of the rebate for the more efficient Snow Logic guns. But as Okemo’s Eb Kinney puts it: “What good is efficiency if you don’t get good snow?”

Accelerating Change

Ski areas in Vermont and elsewhere have, of course, already been moving toward low-e technology. If you can get a gun to produce the same kind of
snow at less than a tenth of the energy of an old air hog, going low-e is, well, a no-brainer. And when you can do it at a bargain-basement price, it seems a double no-brainer. The Great Snow Gun Round-up didn’t push Vermont ski areas in the low-e direction; they were already headed there. But it did accelerate the process exponentially.

Different areas bought into the program to different degrees. Mount Snow jumped in with both feet, purchasing 645 guns, converting the bulk of its snowmaking fleet to low-e. According to Brendan Ryan, project manager for Peak Resorts, Mount Snow’s owner, the purchase was divided among HKD Impulses, Snow Logic DV4s, and Ratnik low-e models. “We probably would have done it (the low-e conversion) over a 20-year period, at one trail per year,” says Ryan. Those 20 years became compressed into a single year thanks to the round-up.

Mount Snow had plenty of company. According to Efficiency Vermont numbers, ski areas tossed 2,187 air-hogging guns onto the scrap pile and purchased 2,671 low-e guns as replacements. The rush to buy put some pressure on the major gun manufacturers to meet the demand; says HKD president Charles Santry, “It took some hustling, but we were able to take care of everyone. It was a nice boost (in business) for sure.”

EV estimated that the new guns would result in annual statewide electricity savings of 12,365 MWhs or $2,000,000. John Hammond, vice-president of mountain operations at Sugarbush, confirms that the electricity savings were substantial. Sugarbush initially purchased 351 guns through the EV program—mostly Snow Logics and HKDs, as well as some Ratniks—and came back to the table just before the expiration of the EV program to buy another 63 guns. Hammond estimated an annual savings of $200,000 to $250,000 in energy costs, and a return-on-investment window of comfortably under four years.

Sugarbush, Vt., took advantage of the round-up by bringing in more than 400 new low-e guns, mostly from HKD (above), Snow Logic, and Ratnik.

So why didn’t all of Vermont’s areas get with the program? While the discounts available through the Efficiency Vermont round-up were substantial, guns still came with a price tag. Add installation costs to the initial price, such as replacing tower posts, along with other conversion costs, and a sizeable cache of cash on hand was still necessary.

In addition, the program did not necessarily dovetail with resorts’ long-term budgeting plans.

Okemo, for example, had already spent $1 million to upgrade snowmaking for the 2013-14 season. The resort did buy 100 guns through the EV program, but that came on top of the considerable snowmaking investments already made. “This year, it (more investment in snowmaking) was not in the cards,” says Ray Kennedy, Okemo’s snowmaking manager. “But this was an offer we couldn’t turn down.” Hammond at Sugarbush echoes that sentiment: “It was money we couldn’t leave on the table.”

According to Kennedy, the technology upgrades at Okemo were not just focused on energy savings but on raising the temperature threshold at which the resort’s snowmaking was able to operate more efficiently. “Below 20 degrees, we were one of the most efficient guys out there,” he says. “We needed something to move to the 25-degree threshold.”

Through the EV round-up, Okemo purchased HKD SV10s in its quest to produce low-energy snow at higher temperatures. Kennedy reports that Okemo saved $189,000, with Efficiency Vermont picking up almost 70 percent of the bill. “We would have been failing dramatically if we hadn’t taken advantage of this program,” he says.

On the other side of the balance sheet, 27,420 pounds of scrap metal were hauled off and sold, to be melted down and recycled. While the income from that sale was not enormous, it did produce an ancillary benefit: $17,000 went to the Vermont Ski Areas Association’s Learn to Ski and Ride Program.

While the Great Snow Gun Round-up produced all smiles in the ski industry, it did not come without at least some political fallout, given that Efficiency Vermont is funded by fees attached to the bills of all Vermont electricity consumers. To some critics, the round-up had the appearance of a sweetheart deal for the ski industry at the expense of individual customers. The response from Efficiency Vermont is that reduced energy consumption—especially with such a huge chunk involved in the round-up—takes pressure off the grid, which ultimately benefits all users.

The Ratnik Sky Giant VI was one of 16 different low-e models that qualified for Efficiency Vermont’s discount program.

A One-Shot Deal

The snow gun round-up in Vermont might seem to be a great model for other ski states to follow, but of course not all states have an entity comparable to Efficiency Vermont. According to Santry, HKD has been involved in rebate programs, primarily through utility companies, in such other states as New York, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Utah. Perhaps the closest parallel to Efficiency Vermont is Efficiency Maine. What made Vermont’s snow gun round-up unique, says Santry, was that it was “the biggest one-time deal” in the conversion to low-e guns, rather than a more piecemeal area-by-area, gun-by-gun approach elsewhere.

As for Energy Vermont, it does not plan on another gun round-up in the near future. But it continues to work with Vermont resorts in seeking to maximize energy efficiency wherever possible. The near-term focus at most resorts will likely be in the hospitality sector—lighting, refrigerators, and the like—especially at a place like Mount Snow, which has completed a 100-percent low-e snowmaking conversion.

When it comes to electricity consumption, snowmaking is the big gobbler. But as its name implies, efficiency is EV’s raison d’etre, and even a small step—one hall light, one leaking window—is a step in the right direction.