When millions of fans from all over the world watched the opening match of the FIFA World Cup on 9 June, 2006 in Germany, Allianz Arena in Munich was the centre of the action. For football matches, this arena replaced Munich's Olympic Stadium, which was opened in 1972.
A view of the massive Allianz Arena showing the scope of external illumination
In the future, football matches involving FC Bayern München, TSV 1860 München and the German national team will be played in the new football arena in the northern part of the city.
In addition to a wide range of architectural and technological highlights, the planners of this stadium set new standards in façade illumination during the construction of the new football stadium.
One of the most impressive features of Allianz Arena is the illuminated external façade that turns the stadium into an enormous light show with changing colours. Beckhoff Bus Terminals are used for controlling the illumination.
When the arena was opened, the stadium illumination coloured in red, white and blue caused quite a stir. The arena is illuminated in each of the respective club's colours, depending on the team playing at the time: white for neutral matches, red for FC Bayern München home matches, and blue for TSV 1860 München.
The company responsible for the technical building services, VA Tech Elin EBG, used Beckhoff Bus Terminals as the I/O system and CX1000 controllers for the lighting system.
Gottfried Blumauer, of VA Tech Elin EBG, reflects on the magnitude of this project: "The new football arena in Munich was our largest stadium construction project to date. The services we provided include illumination, networks, heating, airconditioning, ventilation and sanitary engineering, as well as instrumentation, switching and control engineering. We also dealt with all aspects of electrical engineering, medium voltage installations including energy management, illumination, fire alarms and telecommunication systems, and the complete safety management system. The automation systems are based on an Ethernet network."
VA Tech Elin chose automation components from Beckhoff for the lighting system, malfunction logging, and for controlling the low-voltage switchgear for the whole stadium. The systems controlled by these components include: external façade illumination, floodlighting, general illumination, camera illumination, multilevel parking illumination, safety illumination, column heating and UPS fault monitoring.
The installation utilises 35 CX1000 Embedded PCs running Windows CE and more than 100 I/O stations with BK9000 Bus Couplers that communicate with the higher-level control system via realtime Ethernet. A total of around 2500 Bus Terminals log data from approximately 9000 I/O points.
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