Fundamentally, this is all about reducing the consumption of resources, so clearly less electric and diesel to make compressed air. With the fixed low-e towers, this also reduces the manpower needed to move guns around and set them up. While the low-e guns on OL were a fiasco, they have had low-e guns on Lower East Fall and Lower Skyelark for several years now, and the snow quality and base depths on those trails has been very good. Having a solid 8+ trails with fixed low-e guns will be helpful.Spyderman wrote:So now that you've essentially provided a thesis on the various types of snowmaking guns at Killington, one very important question...........
What is your predicted opening day with all this firepower?
However, while the sled mounted guns may be more efficient, they require much more time and effort to move around, so once they are placed somewhere, you have to expect they will be used for several days for base building then moved to their next location. They can't just leave them sitting around, meaning ground guns and existing towers will still probably used for quick refreshing.
For opening day, these new guns will probably not play much of a factor. They can blow enough snow on Rime to open early in less than 24 hours, the fastest and only way to do that in marginal temps is with a ton of air on the K3000 and ratnick guns. Conversely, the low-e guns will hopefully reduce their energy consumption during the critical trail roll out and base building phases, possibly allowing more frequent refreshes and more snow on the major trails.
Keep in mind they aren't increasing their water pumping capacity, so they won't actually be able to make any more snow when maxed out. Their air capacity was never really a limiting factor to begin with, except in marginal temps, where these low-e guns are completely ineffective anyway. What it will allow is for them to be able to afford running their water maxed out more often and for longer periods, when temps are good and air consumption is very low. For example, in optimal conditions, they could run 200+ low-e guns maxing out their water, on only two compressors.
They talk about cost savings, but I have to question if they have actually cut the snowmaking budget. If the budget has been cut, and they are forced into using less efficient guns in marginal temps for long periods, will they drastically cut their output? Other ski resorts have made this miscalculation when trying to implement low-e guns, or even worse, went 100% low-e and been unable to get open at all in marginal temps. I think mount snow could struggle this year because they seem to have eliminated all high-e guns.