Real-Time reaction, autonomous and energy-efficient snowmelt technology for lightly and heavily trafficked pavement surfaces.
Winter conditions on roads cause traffic delays that cost 1% of EU GDP and 1,000 causalities annually. Similarly, snow fall causes air traffic disturbance that can cost €57.3M per storm. For pedestrians it a major health issue as an increase of 25% increase in hospitalization and 33% rise in cases of hip fractures is observed during winter season. Current solutions suffer from many shortcomings. The most popular, plowing and salting, is manual, has low response times, damages traffic surfaces, vehicle corrosion and environment pollution. To answer this need we have developed SNOWLESS, a snow melting solution comprising of our proprietary amorphous alloy heating ribbons that are embedded in pavements and completely automatic control unit with real-time dynamic response. Our prioritization scheme for segmented heating zones ensures real-time response (15 minutes from automatic snow/ice detection), low annual operational costs of €1.2/m2, almost no maintenance, 30-60% reduction power consumption. Our solution is environmentally friendly, prevents asphalt cracking by reducing the temperature amplitude and promotes self-healing in the asphalt itself. Our commercialization targets Scandinavia, Central Europe and North America, a market worth €1.75B for shopping malls, roads, pedestrian walkways and airports driven by demand for sustainable snow removal alternative. SNOWLESS has already been implemented in parking lots, successfully reducing operational costs, with the installations generating €1.5M in sales over the last 3 years. We intend commercialize SNOWLESS 3 years after development, ideally by 2021 in 2 phases, with initial introduction to shopping mall parkings which have less stringent requirements and then progress to difficult applications such airports and road infrastructure. We anticipate a revenue and profit of €50M and €15M respectively coming from sales over 5 years, creating 21 employment opportunities in the process.