The 2024 Australian Open Tennis was viewed by over 370 million people in more than 200 countries, a record viewing for the event.
Up to 21 courts were covered live by over 180 cameras including Drones, Spidercams, NetCams & FlyCams.
To facilitate the global broadcast, a 900m2 temporary facility was built to house the heat-generating vision and audio equipment.
Active Air, who has been providing temporary air conditioning for the event since 1988, was engaged to provide an engineered solution to condition the temporary data centre.
“Maintaining temperature in the broadcast facility was critical to the live feed,” according to Shane Hardey, director, Active Air. “If the equipment overheats, there is a real chance the live feed will be disrupted.”
The data centre needed to be maintained at 20 degrees with 100% redundancy factored into the design.
Active Air provided multiple 260kW Air Cooled Chillers with primary and secondary chilled water loops. The conditioned air was distributed via twenty-two 20kW Internal Air Handlers.
This system was complimented by eight 15kW Split Systems to spot cool extremely sensitive equipment.
To ensure the space was positively pressurised, Active Air also provided pre-chilled packaged air conditioners to provide makeup air for the exhaust system.
This was important to prevent infiltration of hot humid air which would damage the sensitive equipment.
The entire system was controlled and remotely monitored via a temporary BMS system.
“Our team could continually monitor and control the equipment during the event and would have been automatically notified if a failure had been imminent,” Hardey said.
Even with the extreme heat of the Melbourne summer, the temporary air conditioning system-maintained temperature, ensuring millions of viewers at home never missed a point.