Ice arena O’Brien Group Arena

The venue contains two Olympic sized ice rinks, state-of-the-art sound and light systems, stadium seating for up to 1,000 people, specialist winter sports gym and a café, bar and function rooms.

The HVAC control system for the airside plant is the OPEN EMS DDC control system manufactured by DEOS AG in Rheine, Germany and distributed on licence in Australia by DEOS Australia. The DEOS control system has been selected for this project above all else because of its exclusive ability in Australia to run the COBAOPT System (today: OPENdynamics), also developed in Germany.

The HVAC-system had to ensure a temperature on the ice of -2 °C, 1.5 m above ice 14 °C for human comfort. Additional challenges were the stratification issues that come with a > 10m high ceiling and the heat transfer to and melting of ice. There have to be realized two change of states at ice. In simplest possible terms the COBAOPT System uses a unique control algorithm to create uniform mixing of the air molecules. The result is an even temperature spread throughout occupied space and energy savings on the operation of the HVAC plant.