SMI® Customer Snowmaking Successes

Olympic Snowmaking Success Story: Rosa Khutor, Russia: Sochi 2014 Olympic Venue

Rosa Khutor is a new Russian resort opened to the public in January 2011.  The resort location was selected in the Caucasus Mountain Range near Sochi Russia at 42º latitude and in close proximity to the Black Sea.  The resort elevation is between 2300 and 950 meters.  This resort will host the Alpine events at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The snowmaking design and owner objectives were extremely challenging due to the big vertical, marginal temperatures, wide slopes, environmental aspects, energy and logistics.

The broader project objectives were to include the best technology in a very powerful system with good value.  Significant Olympic experience and a strong local Russian partner like Skado were also requested.

A beautiful, plentiful and pure mountain river was discovered on a helicopter site fly over.  A long hike through a rugged and thick forest confirmed the river was favorable and a preliminary intake position was chosen.  Two large pond locations were found as well.  The snowmaking water volumes in a typical year will be over 300,000m³ for over 100 hectares of coverage area.  The minimum river flows are over 140 liters per second.

The Alpine course layouts and mapping changed considerably during the planning process, but a detailed engineering study was commenced to document and detail the proposed snowmaking system.  The Rosa Khutor leadership team engaged local engineers along with SMI Snow Makers, Skado and the RK engineering team to assist with the lakes, pumping, cooling, water pumping and piping distribution system, power supply and distribution and communication engineering along with detailed construction schedules.

There was considerable debate on the advantage and disadvantages of fan and stick snowmaking technology.  The wide slopes, the limited and very marginal weather conditions, energy limitations and wind fighting capability were the key factors in RK selecting an all fan system with primarily fixed position tower fans.  Swing arms and portable carriages were utilized on the steep slopes and flatter areas.

Based on the coverage requirements, the snowmaking system was sized at 46m³/min water capacity, 23m³/min water cooling capacity, with 160 SMI Super PoleCat and Puma Snowtowers and Snowmakers for the Alpine slopes.  The snowgun and hydrant spacing was tightened from 75 to 40 meters as the system dropped down in elevation.

The snowmaking system vertical is from 2050 meters elevation at the top of the Men’s downhill to 950 meters elevation in the finish zone.  A main pumping station at the new Olympic Lake uses 14 x 450 Kw pumps to feed water between elevations 950m to 1360m.  The D Lift booster pumping station uses 5 x 225 Kw pumps to deliver water between elevation 1360 and 1630m.  The downhill booster uses 2 x 225 Kw pumps to deliver water from elevation 1630m to 2050m at the top.  The three Torrent pump stations are all fully automatic with VFD controls and fiber optic communications.

The full snowmaking power load for the 2010/11 system is 11.2 MW.  SMI’s SmartSnow software and controls are the brains behind the automation.  SmartSnow is monitoring and controlling the lake and sump levels, the water cooling pumps and towers, the three pump stations, the weather devices and snowguns.  The software is dual language for both Russian and English.

The construction was broken into engineering, lakes, power, buildings/pumping/cooling, hill piping/cabling, and snowguns.  SMI provided project supervision and technical specialists at key times in the project.  Skado assisted as the local constructor of the pump stations and snowguns.  Separate RK contractors were selected for the buildings, piping/cabling and the lakes construction.

After a long and complex construction process from May to December 2010, power and water were ready near the end of December 2010.  The system was flushed and tested with only a few minor leaks and power issues.   Snowmaking was officially commenced in early January 2011 once power was stabilized to the site.  A significant new power feed was delivered and energized to the site at this time, which resulted in numerous blackouts.  The snowmaking system was able to simply shutdown and drain and ready itself to be started again when power returned.

Marginal weather conditions moved in and production snowmaking commenced at -1.5ºC wet bulb in early January 2011.  Around January 20, 2011 considerable snow had been produced at all elevations and natural snow had fallen above 1500 meters.  So the decision was made to proceed with opening the resort and a go for hosting the Europe Cup in February 2011.  The races were very successful.

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