A five-star hotel once marketed its "LEED Gold certification" as a selling point, but an energy audit found that elevators accounted for 28% of the entire building's electricity consumption, far exceeding the industry's level of 12% -15% and seriously deviating from the initial promise of 8%.
Short sighted procurement decisions
Three years ago, in order to compress the budget, a supplier was selected that was 37% lower than the market price. Eight passenger elevators are equipped with outdated asynchronous motors, without energy recovery, and have an energy efficiency level of only three. As a result, the braking energy was converted into heat, and the high temperature in the machine room reached 45 ℃ in summer, resulting in 23 unplanned shutdowns per year.
Expensive data costs
Third party testing data shows:
Each elevator consumes up to 42000 kWh of electricity annually, which is 2.1 times that of first-class energy-saving elevators;
Calculated at 1.2 yuan/kWh, the electricity bill spent over ten years exceeds 5.04 million yuan, which is equivalent to buying four more efficient elevators;
The high temperature in the computer room increases the frequency converter failure rate by 300%, and the air conditioning system has to consume an additional 15% of electricity to cool down, forming a vicious cycle of "high energy consumption - high failure - higher energy consumption".
Industry concept and certification loopholes
LEED only gives 5% weight to elevator energy efficiency, while equipment procurement price affects 20% of the score, prompting companies to pursue low prices unilaterally. In fact, elevators are the second largest energy consuming equipment after air conditioning. The first level energy-efficient elevator combined with energy recovery and group control system can achieve an overall energy saving of over 55%.
Shift from cost to value
Some projects have adopted the "ten-year total cost" model, taking into account equipment prices and energy consumption, and have chosen a plan that is initially 25% more expensive but overall 18% lower, with the price difference recovered within 6 years. The new version of the "Green Building Evaluation Standards" will increase the energy efficiency weight of elevators to 15%, promoting the industry to shift from price competition to value competition.
The True Meaning of Green Building
True green buildings should not use photovoltaics and gimmicks to conceal high energy consuming equipment. Only by raising energy efficiency indicators to the core of procurement and replacing one-time investment concepts with full lifecycle costs can we avoid the "energy consumption black hole" and achieve sustainable value.
