Opera House partners with Honeywell for top sustainability rating

A partnership between building controls company Honeywell and the Sydney Opera House (SOH) has helped the UNESCO World Heritage-listed building achieve a 6 Star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA). Achieving the prestigious rating involved retrofitting the Opera House with Honeywell’s ready-now technology to help support more sustainable operations and to reduce the building’s environmental impact.

The SOH is one of the first UNESCO World Heritage-listed buildings to receive the top rating, which represents ‘World Leadership’ in environmental and social sustainability operations. In 2021, the SOH welcomed Honeywell as its first Global Goals partner, supporting the world-famous performing arts centre’s commitment to sustainability, diversity and inclusion.

The Opera House operates 24/7, requiring close collaboration between Honeywell and the SOH’s safety, projects and service teams. Together, they work to identify and implement solutions tailored to the unique needs of the building.

These include creating a technology system that monitors indoor air quality and relative humidity; integrating more than 20 disparate subsystems in the building to help improve safety, energy and water usage; and automating outside air control through real-time air quality data from the Bureau of Meteorology.

Honeywell has also implemented electricity spot-price monitoring, extraction fan control in non-air-conditioned areas and monitoring of coldroom doors that remain open for too long.

The company has identified potential energy-saving opportunities in the building, including the installation of more than 60 water meters and more than 800 electrical meters.

These strategies help enable automated responses and alerts to changing conditions, which supports operational efficiency and provides a safer and more comfortable environment for staff, audiences and visitors.

Sydney Opera House Plant Room. Image courtesy of Honeywell.

Collaborating closely with the SOH’s engineering team, Honeywell has tailored the system to the unique requirements of a performing arts building, while leveraging existing systems such as the building’s pioneering seawater cooling system. Building operations at the Sydney Opera House are anchored by the Honeywell Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI), a comprehensive solution that monitors and controls the building management system (BMS), as well as hardware and equipment throughout the building’s ecosystem.

Using the system as a single point of data analysis, the teams can more effectively monitor and control systems to support peak performance. For example, the system captures information on ticket sales to enable efficient temperature scheduling in performance venues, switching heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment on and off, and calculating baseline energy consumption. In instances of high energy demand, the BMS alerts the building to respond by selectively shedding electricity loads. Additionally, the air circulation system automatically shuts down outside air intakes during bushfire smoke events to improve indoor air quality.

“The Sydney Opera House takes a thoughtful and deliberate approach to minimise its impact on the environment while providing a world-class experience for its occupants — all while carefully protecting its UNESCO World Heritage-listed status,” said Billal Hammoud, President and CEO of Honeywell Building Technologies.

“This requires a careful balance and technologies, but most importantly, teamwork. The Honeywell team who service and support the Sydney Opera House every day closely collaborate with its engineering and sustainability teams to make sure the building systems are performing efficiently, and we work to find innovative solutions to meet well-defined goals.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/Deejpilot