I love that seemingly random trades that we largely take for granted have these case studies that result in awards for things us muggles never think about.
A garage I went to subscribed to a trade magazine for towing and recovery companies and left the issues in the waiting room. Sure enough, they had a recovery of the year type of award.
I suspect awards are one of the more profitable niches of the wider events industry.
They're cheaper to produce than a full-scale conference (needing just a 1 day hire of a hotel ballroom or similar) and are easy to sell - every business or team nominated for an award will pay for a table, as will various suppliers and vendors who see it as a great marketing opportunity.
I guess it makes sense that there's an elevator of the year award, though it's never something I'd have thought of.
The photo of one of the brake assembly components mounted to a welded tubular skid, bolted to a large structure of I-beams, bolted to another I-beam skid which is bolted to the floor, is tickling me as slightly humorous.
I'm sure they thought it was a good idea given the constraints of the time. They also lacked a lot of modern knowledge and so couldn't do it the new way. Likely if someone had tried the new way at the time they would - rightly - criticism how unsafe and unreliable it would be. Modern engineering and electronics have made a lot of improvements in the last 120 years, which in turn makes the modern stuff a good choice now.
Oh, definitely. I just saw a funny parallel with projects even today, where something is done to make something work at the time (and we’ll make it better later), and later never arrives.
My first thought was “there’s an elevator of the year award?” but reading it was fascinating. A lot of planning and work went into executing that modernization project from what was originally a fairly unique system. And 45-50% energy savings per year is a great ROI.
My first thought was probably overpriced, hard to use, non-standard garbage, but it looks nice so it wins an award.
Turns out they are replacing the ancient non-standard stuff with modern standard stuff. How the ancients did it before we knew better is interesting - and you can't fault them for not knowing what we know now.
By contrast, the web design is overpriced, hard to use, non-standard garbage. I'm sure that will win an aware despite being an example of how not to do web pages.
I find things like this interesting, I guess everyone finds this normal but,
"Power consumption is down 45% - 50% annually."
Well is it 45 or 50? Is this a measurement or prediction or a random number? From an engineer or marketing? If prediction, why not saying so? Is this a range for several years depending on elevator usage?
But my best guess is they simply _cannot know_ because the usage patterns of the new elevators will be different from the old elevators based on dispatching and sequencing and call systems. In other words, even if they know the exact consumption of the old system, and even if they expect precisely the same number of passengers per day, the _actual operating cost_ will depend on who arrives in the lobby, at what time, destined for which floors, and all other traffic patterns throughout the year.
I think the error bars are too high to say more than that. I doubt they did a measure of the power the original consumed, just an analysis of the system. They likely only have whole building power consumption, where HVAC is the majority of the costs: 1 degree difference in the weather or a couple tenants taking a vacation will make a much larger difference than the elevator.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the savings was the new lights are LED while the old only incandescent was available - this is just speculation though, I have no idea. Every gear and every stretch of the ropes cost a little bit of efficiency and the modern system has less of those.
> I wouldn't be surprised if most of the savings was the new lights are LED while the old only incandescent was available
It’s definitely not the lighting, you only need a few thousand lumens to have bright elevator lighting. If you need 4000 lumens, that is (5) 60W incandescent lamps, switching to LEDs that do 100 lumens per watt (8W lamp) saves you 260 watts/hr.
The new elevator uses a VFD (they call it a VVVF) to control the motor which is where virtually all of the gains come from. Lowering the speed of the motor lowers the power usage, it’s a non-linear relationship but a motor spinning at 75% speed uses 1/4 to 1/3rd of the power that it would use at full speed.
> They likely only have whole building power consumption
A garage I went to subscribed to a trade magazine for towing and recovery companies and left the issues in the waiting room. Sure enough, they had a recovery of the year type of award.
https://awardsawards.conferenceawards.co.uk/
They're cheaper to produce than a full-scale conference (needing just a 1 day hire of a hotel ballroom or similar) and are easy to sell - every business or team nominated for an award will pay for a table, as will various suppliers and vendors who see it as a great marketing opportunity.
The photo of one of the brake assembly components mounted to a welded tubular skid, bolted to a large structure of I-beams, bolted to another I-beam skid which is bolted to the floor, is tickling me as slightly humorous.
For certain values of "I", and depending on the baseline cost of operating an elevator!
Turns out they are replacing the ancient non-standard stuff with modern standard stuff. How the ancients did it before we knew better is interesting - and you can't fault them for not knowing what we know now.
By contrast, the web design is overpriced, hard to use, non-standard garbage. I'm sure that will win an aware despite being an example of how not to do web pages.
"Power consumption is down 45% - 50% annually."
Well is it 45 or 50? Is this a measurement or prediction or a random number? From an engineer or marketing? If prediction, why not saying so? Is this a range for several years depending on elevator usage?
Things like this irk me a lot.
But my best guess is they simply _cannot know_ because the usage patterns of the new elevators will be different from the old elevators based on dispatching and sequencing and call systems. In other words, even if they know the exact consumption of the old system, and even if they expect precisely the same number of passengers per day, the _actual operating cost_ will depend on who arrives in the lobby, at what time, destined for which floors, and all other traffic patterns throughout the year.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the savings was the new lights are LED while the old only incandescent was available - this is just speculation though, I have no idea. Every gear and every stretch of the ropes cost a little bit of efficiency and the modern system has less of those.
It’s definitely not the lighting, you only need a few thousand lumens to have bright elevator lighting. If you need 4000 lumens, that is (5) 60W incandescent lamps, switching to LEDs that do 100 lumens per watt (8W lamp) saves you 260 watts/hr.
The new elevator uses a VFD (they call it a VVVF) to control the motor which is where virtually all of the gains come from. Lowering the speed of the motor lowers the power usage, it’s a non-linear relationship but a motor spinning at 75% speed uses 1/4 to 1/3rd of the power that it would use at full speed.
> They likely only have whole building power consumption
You can easily measure the power of a single circuit or single panelboard using a submeter: https://www.shopemondirect.com/catalog/shop/Shop-E-Mon-Direc...
Up and Then Down (2014) By Nick Paumgarten https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-do...