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Upgrading an elevators motors and drives often leads to better performance with lower operational costs
Many elevator doors are elaborate examples of vintage, legacy architecture and design, like art deco, grillwork, or bas-relief bronze casting.
The motors and drives that power those elevators often are vintage, legacy systems also. But they can be distinctly less charming. Elevators, like many systems driven with large motors, often belong to owners who take a "leave well enough alone" attitude toward modernization.
Because they're used intermittently, have a relatively simple function, and use electromechanical systems that hardly anyone ever sees, putting the latest and greatest motors and drives into them often isn't a top priority.
Sometimes that attitude is justified, but sometimes it can lead building owners and managers to overlook the advantages of modernizing their elevators.
Upgrading motors and drives has the potential to heighten energy efficiency, improve speed and other aspects of performance, and make maintenance easier-although it presents its own set of maintenance-related challenges.
"In general, the industry is about 15 to 20 years behind technology as it relates to the actual technological components of the elevator," says Randy McGinnis, co-owner of Peak Elevator, an installation and maintenance provider based in Arvada, Colo. "When you look at other industries, manufacturing industries, or whatnot, that are basically using components to drive conveyor belts, there's a number of technological advances in manufacturing facilities these days that 1 think could be incorporated into elevators," he says.
Keeping the status quo
Industry observers say simple inertia accounts for much or the technical lag; owners want to keep going with what they have. This extends to the basics of the motor-drive system.
"Depending on what they have out there existing today, a lot of them opt to repair [existing motors and drives] instead of opting to update them," says Shannon McDonald, vice president with B&M Electric Motor Service, Inc., a repair shop in Hickory, N.C., that services elevator motors, among others.
McDonald was referring to motor-generator (MG) sets. These stopped being installed in new elevators in the late 1980s, but they still power many American elevators.
In an MG system, a generator takes in alternating current and converts it to direct current for a d-c motor, which raises and lowers...