Whether designing and building a new structure or relocating to an existing office building, elevator performance is one of the most important aspects for consideration when choosing a location for a business.  A comfortable, convenient, rapid, intelligent and safe vertical transportation system allows employees, guests and materials to come and go with maximum efficiency.  Additionally, a high-tech elevator system can effect a business’s bottom line, as new systems require less space (increasing rentable space), can utilize more cost-effective materials and are substantially more energy efficient than most elevators used in North America today.

Energy Efficiency and Green Technology
Elevator energy consumption in North American office buildings is generally considered to account for 5% of building energy use.  While traction elevator systems in high-rise buildings are considered more efficient than hydraulic elevators used in low-rise buildings, there is still significant room for improvement.  According to industry sources, new technologies including advanced motors and drives and sophisticated control software could reduce elevator energy use by up to 30-40% and eliminate waste byproducts, providing significant savings in actual energy cost along with environmentally friendly machines.

Many of the latest elevator innovations provide increased energy efficiency as a product of more sophisticated elevator systems.  One innovative system uses a compact variable-speed motor design which uses less energy to produce more torque to move an elevator at a higher speed.  This system replaces conventional wire cables, which must use a large geared pulley system, with flat polyethylene-coated steel belts wrapped around significantly smaller pulleys.  The smaller pulley rotates 7.5 times faster than traditional pulleys, so the smaller motor actually produces more torque.  An added advantage of this system is that the flat belts do not require lubrication so no waste by-products are produced.

Another innovation on the horizon is an elevator system that generates and stores its own energy as it returns empty cars to the top or bottom of a building.

Space Savings
The value of space in newly constructed buildings is premium for building designers and owners.  Whether building owners are offering penthouses at the top of elevator shafts, parking at the base, or just looking for more rentable office space throughout the building, the demand for space-saving elevator shaft and machine room designs is one of the key market drivers in the elevator industry.

This has led to designs of systems without elevator machine rooms where compact drive systems and control hardware are built into the base of the elevator shaft, or mounted at the top of the shaft. 

Additionally, to save space and provide increased elevator capacities, elevator systems around the world are using multiple cars in single elevator shafts.  The most common of these designs utilize a “double-decker” elevator car with entrance doors on two floors of a building at one time.  New technology also allows for two independently operating elevator cars to move within the same shaft.  This system uses destination-based dispatch software and advanced safety systems to operate at maximum efficiency while maintaining a minimum safe distance between the two cars at any time.

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