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South Africa: Improved Lift System Takes Building to New Heights
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
6 August 2008
Posted to the web 6 August 2008
Nick Wilson
Johannesburg
THE development of new energy-efficient technology will be the most important factor in the battle to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and power usage in the South African property industry.
Since January this year - when the country's power shortages reached crisis levels and resulted in widespread load shedding - the property industry has been forced to "go green" and look for alternative and energy-efficient methods of delivering power to buildings.
South African engineering consultant Richard Murphy says private property owners and developers such as large institutions are the ones who will look more readily at using new "green" technology - such as energy-efficient air conditioning systems and lifts - than listed property companies and funds, which are focusing on more "immediate returns".
Murphy says listed property funds tend to "sweat" their property assets to get returns to their unit holders and will therefore find it more difficult to achieve the 10% energy reduction targets that power utility Eskom has been calling for.
He says that in the general South African property market, the bids going out on tender for new installations of lifts and "retro fits" - where new technology is placed in old buildings - will err towards the new energy-efficient technology because the installation is "smaller, more compact, lighter and energy-efficient".
Lifts, which are often overlooked by property landlords as a potential energy saver, may hold an important key for reducing energy consumption in properties. For example, lifts in properties traditionally consume anything from 10%-12% of a building's total power.
Murphy says new technology, such as lifts that do not need a machine room, could reduce this consumption by half. This means that 6% of the building's total energy is saved by changing the lift system.
"By changing and modernising the lift systems you're gapping more than half of that 10% Eskom target already."
Otis Elevator Company, which is part of the US-based United Technologies Company (UTC) group and is the largest lift manufacturer in the world, says that, globally, there is an increasing trend of property owners opting for lift systems that do not need a machine room because they use less energy to operate and also create more space for landlords to use for storage facilities or further upward expansion of high-rise properties.
Although this technology is not that new - it was introduced by Otis in 1999 for the European market - it has taken a while to gather momentum.
But Dilip Rangnekar, communications and marketing director for Otis, says the company's lift system called Gen2 is now the "fastest-selling product" in its 154-year history.
"In the US and other countries around the world people are starting to demand Gen2 elevator systems when new property development projects are built," says Rangnekar.
He says China, Japan, India and the US are the markets "gaining more momentum with Gen2 this year".
The company's new lifts were developed by changing the rope systems that had been previously used. These steel ropes or cables that hoisted the lifts up and down required heavy-duty machinery to operate. These machines are traditionally placed on top of the roofs of buildings.
Rangnekar says Otis made use of the traditional steel ropes but instead used thinner strands of steel coated in polyurethane to create strap-like cables. These cables are much thinner and more flexible than traditional steel ropes, but also stronger.
Because of the greater flexibility of the cables they require much smaller permanent magnetic "gearless" machines that can now be stored within the lift itself.
Rangnekar says that when the system was first developed in 1999 it was not "commercially viable yet, and far ahead of its time".
A lot of property owners were "not looking at products that were energy-efficient but rather at products that were fast". But it gained increasing popularity in Europe between 1999 and 2002.
He says one factor that has become an important selling point is that the traditional "machine room occupies a lot of real estate space that could be used for renting purposes or storage facilities".
"Doing away with the machine rooms at the top of the building enables the architect to freely design roof space. It also gives room for expansion upwards," says Rangnekar.
He says Otis has also recently introduced regenerative drive technology to its lift systems. Regenerative drives redistribute energy back into the electricity grid and prevent waste.
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