The Voice of the Lift, Escalator and Moving Walk Industry in Europe

During the Ecodesign Preparatory Study for Lifts it became evident that ELA needs to gain better insights on the ecological performance of today’s state of the art lifts. Therefore, the ecological data collection was initiated in July 2020 by the Ecodesign Working Group. With a questionnaire, ELA members were asked to provide information on energy performance according to EN ISO 25745-2 for selected lift configurations, called base cases, and on applied design options. To assure confidentiality of the individual data the reported information was consolidated considering the same strict rules as for lift statistics. Aggregated results were only provided if at least four respondents representing each at least 5% contributed information. Thus, not for all base cases and design options results can be reported. In particular only for the electric lift base cases 1A, 2A and 3 sufficient data was available to consolidate and analyze energy performance. Insufficient data was reported for the hydraulic lift base cases 1B and 2B and the bigger electric lift base case 4. Nevertheless, information and conclusions as outlined below are possible.

Base Cases

The base cases as defined and used in the Ecodesign Preparatory Study for Lifts were used for this first data collection. The details on the parameters and configuration are shown in Table 1.

eco data

Table 1: Base Case definition

Coverage of new installations 2019

Diagram 1 shows that the reporting companies represent about 81% of the new installed lifts in 2019. However, only 23% of the reported installations represent base cases. This leads to the conclusion that the base cases do not really address the main volume of new installations.

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Diagram 1: Coverage of new installations installed in 2019

Energy performance

The information on average annual energy demand in Table 2 for the base cases eligible for consolidation show that today’s new installation lifts are well within energy efficiency class B according to EN ISO 25745-2. This confirms ELA’s position communicated towards the Ecodesign Preparatory Study for Lifts. The results also show that the energy reduction after 5 minutes is well established whereas a further reduction after 30 minutes (deep sleep mode) is rarely implemented.

ecodata table 2

Table 2: Average annual energy demand in kWh

Design options

For the data collection design options as used in the Ecodesign Preparatory Study for Lifts were considered. Same as for the base cases not all design options could be consolidated due to insufficient reported information. Diagram 2 gives an overview on the average application of design options. LED technology for indicators and lighting, frequency-controlled drive systems and gearless synchronous machines as well as switching off car lighting and ventilation are commonly applied today. Other design options such as reducing counter balancing, regenerative drive system and switching off additional component may bear some energy saving potential.

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Diagram 2: Design Options

The ecological data collection helps ELA to gain a better picture about where lifts stand in regard to ecological performance. It enables ELA to better position itself when discussing with authorities and standardizations bodies in the future. Although the first data collection took much longer than anticipated, it is foreseen to enhance the collection and repeat the exercise on a regular basis.