17.5.2013

New pumping plant for Bukovel

Bukovel - a name well worth remembering,  since the ski resort in the west of the Ukraine seemed to arise out of nowhere in 2001 and has now got a success story to tell like no other. 16 modern ski lifts and some 50 kilometers of slopes provide fun for up to 12,000 ski enthusiasts every day. Bukovel has risen through the ranks within one decade to become one of the largest and most modern ski resorts in Eastern Europe and probably one of the most important. It is doubtful whether this success story could have been written in quite the same way without snow-making technology because, while the climate in the Bukovel region is cold, it has not had very much snow in recent years.

Bukovel has been working with TechnoAlpin since 2006 in order to be able to guarantee the supply of snow. The existing snow-making system has been modernized and extended. TechnoAlpin has carried out the extension work in two stages to date, building a snow-making system with a total of 370 lances and 50 fan guns to supply Bukovel with snow and to make the resort 100% self-sufficient in snow generation. For the snow production to function, however, each snow-making system needs its own pumping plant which is like the beating heart of the whole system. The pumping plant is also the most customized part of the whole system in that it needs to be specially adapted to the local conditions. In order to be able to supply the snow guns with sufficient water, Bukovel has had two separate pumping plants until now which work independently. The total output of the two pumps of 490 l/s was insufficient, however, to be able to supply all the snow guns at the same time.

TechnoAlpin is currently nearing the end of the latest project in Bukovel which will see the addition of a new pumping plant. The new system will considerably increase output. The individual pumping systems are being combined to form one custom-made and efficient pumping system which will guarantee the water supply for all the snow guns at the same time by a doubling of its capacity to almost 1,000 l/s. The results are impressive, with an area of 1,650,000 m² covered with snow in what is believed to be a record-breaking time of just 100 hours.

The faster time is good for energy efficiency as the windows of opportunity for snow generation can now be exploited to the maximum. The fact that these windows have been getting shorter and shorter in the last few years makes it all the more important to speed up the snow-making process. Indeed, valuable energy can be saved by rapid snow generation in optimum temperatures. The first requirement for this to happen is powerful snow guns but the second requirement is efficient pumping systems tailored precisely to the local conditions - attributes which definitely apply to the new automatic pumping plant in Bukovel.