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Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI
Elevators and escalators: Energy performance and strategies to promote energy efficiency
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
2010
,
Almeida, A. de
,
Duetschke, E.
,
Patrao, C.
,
Hirzel, S.
,
Fong, J.
Elevators and escalators are the crucial element to make it practical and comfortable to live, work and shop several floors above and below ground. In tertiary sector of the EU-27, about 1.6 million elevators are installed as well as about 56,000 escalators and moving walks. Their energy consumption adds up to 3 to 8 % of the overall electricity consumption of the building. However, elevators and escalators have not received much attention in terms of energy efficiency for a long time. In this paper, we characterize the energy consumption profiles these vertical transportation devices in standby and running based on a monitoring campaign conducted within the E4-project. An estimation of the overall energy consumed by elevators and escalators is presented. Building on this, potentials for saving energy are identified - both from a technical point of view as well as from a behavioral approach. The technical analyses show that the savings potential is up to 66 %. The behavioral approach includes an interview study and identifies market barriers to the penetration of energy efficient technology and proposes strategies to overcome those barriers.