HVAC drives from ABB at Old Trafford

Variable speed drives from ABB are helping visitors to Manchester United's stadium at Old Trafford dine in comfort, however overheated things may get on the pitch.

The drives control the fans for the air conditioning system serving the two buildings that comprise the stadium's Quadrant expansion project.

The new Quadrant buildings have added around 7,600 seats to the stadium by increasing capacity in the second tier in the north-west and north-east quadrants of the ground.

The development brings the total capacity of Old Trafford to 76,500.

The spaces underneath the new seating house five large kitchens and 10 restaurants, offering a range of corporate hospitality experiences, including fine dining.

It is in these corporate lounges that the stadium's building management system relies on 33 ABB drives to control the comfort of diners.

The drives range in capacity from 3kW to 7.5kW.

The primary contractor for the Quadrant project was Laing O'Rourke, which authorised the installation of the ABB drives.

Building services manager Andy Schilling says that one of the main attractions in choosing ABB's HVAC drives was their native, or built-in, BACnet communications capability.

This enabled Laing O'Rourke to reduce the amount of cabling around the buildings, making installation easier and reducing costs.

"The drives have on-board capacity for having components such as control switches wired in, so we didn't need to have as many separate cables running back to the building management system".

"This enabled us to save on the hardware and wiring costs," says Mr.Schilling.

But he stresses that the most important thing about the HVAC drives is their reliability.

"They must not fail," he says.

"I've worked with ABB and these drives before and I've always found them very reliable".

"You could say I'm a very satisfied client.

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