India's Lifts Waste Energy and Pollute the Power Grid — and No One Measures Either
Why India needs mandatory, on-site testing of lift energy use and power-quality (THD) — not just standards on paper. A standard is a number on paper; implementation is a meter on site — and India has the first and none of the second.
About the author
Kunwer Sachdev
Inventor and Indian patent-holder of Emergency Rescue Device (ERD) technology, and founder of Su-Kam (1988–2018, now no longer associated) and Kunwwer.ai. He mentors Su-vastika — one of the brands compared on this site — but holds no shareholding in it. LiftInverter.com is owned and funded by him, and the same published criteria are applied to every brand.
The problem, in plain terms
Every new tower in India runs on lifts — several of them, moving all day. Each one quietly carries two invisible problems. It wastes a large amount of electricity, and it pollutes the building's own power supply, dirtying the current for every flat, office and machine sharing that line.
Nobody checks either one. The lift inspector signs a safety paper. The electricity meter only counts units consumed. At no point does anyone put an instrument on the lift to see how much energy it wastes or how much disturbance it pushes back into the wiring. The lift is passed, connected, and forgotten.
So the cost lands quietly on everyone else: residents pay higher bills and live with hotter, fire-prone wiring; the building's transformer and backup systems age faster and trip without explanation; and the grid absorbs pollution it cannot trace. The rules to prevent all of this already exist on paper — but in India, paper does the job a meter should. Nothing is actually measured.
That is the heart of it: writing a Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) number is the easy half — the hard half is that no instrument, no report field, and no accountable signatory exists to verify it on site. Below is what that gap looks like technically, and what it is costing us.
The technical picture · two different problems, stop conflating them
Ask 1 · Energy Efficiency
A design-stage property, verifiable on paper
How much energy the lift uses — a nameplate / energy-class value (IS 17515 / ISO 25745) you can read off a datasheet at plan approval. Enforceable today, if anyone tied it to the completion certificate.3
Ask 2 · THD / Power Quality
A site-generated property, live and load-dependent
How much harmonic distortion the drive injects into the grid. The same certified drive can pass in a lab and pollute on site, because as-installed THD depends on grid impedance, other loads, and whether filters were fitted.1 It exists only when a meter reads the live line.
The missing provision: who measures on-site THD? No one
On-site THD can only be captured by a power-quality analyzer clamped on the live line, under load, at the point of common coupling. Nothing in India's system is set up to take that reading or to receive it — no field instrument, no line in any official form, no party required to sign it.
| Body | What its report actually covers | On-site THD? |
|---|---|---|
| Lift Inspector | Brakes, ropes, governor, mechanical safety on the completion report | No field for it |
| Power Dept / DISCOM | Sanctioned load and kWh for billing at the consumer point | Not measured |
| BIS | Type-certifies a product sample in a lab (ISI mark) | No as-installed test |
| Independent (NABL) labs | Capable of measuring it on commission | No trigger / format / pathway |
The benchmark exists — IEEE 519 caps voltage THD at 5% (3% per harmonic) at the point of common coupling.2 India sets no such ceiling for lifts, and even if it did, there is currently nowhere to record the result. India's own grid-connectivity rules — the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) technical standards — set power-quality expectations upstream, but nothing carries them down to an individual building's lift, where the distortion is produced.7
What "no provision" creates
No instrument
The measurement can't happen
No inspectorate or DISCOM office is equipped or funded for power-quality analyzers, so the reading is never even attempted.
No form field
Nowhere to write it
Lift-completion and connection reports have no line for harmonics — a willing engineer has nowhere to record a result.
No gate
Nothing demands it
No point in plan approval, commissioning or the operating licence requires the reading, so it is never asked for.
No signatory
No one is accountable
No named party must measure and sign, so there is no liability for an absent or false number.
No method
Results aren't comparable
No prescribed measurement point, load condition, duration or template — the rare readings that exist can't be compared.
No baseline
The problem is invisible
Regulators hold zero aggregate field data on lift THD, so the scale is unknown and policy is set blind.
How it's affecting our system
The grid
DISCOM eats an untraceable cost
Thousands of unmeasured dirty drives aggregate upstream — derated transformers, higher losses, neutral overloads, nuisance trips the utility pays for and can't trace.1
The building
Heat, fire risk, early ageing
Harmonics overheat shared neutrals (a fire path), fail APFC/capacitor banks, and prematurely age wiring and transformers.1
Backup reliability · the ERD angle
It degrades the very backup
A polluted bus distorts the reference an inverter / UPS / ERD syncs to, heats components and shortens battery life — making a clean zero-break handover harder. The energy case and the safety case are one case.
Cost & carbon
Over-sized DG, UPS and filters
Builders over-spec generators and bolt on filters to survive dirty current — wasted CapEx, fuel and emissions to compensate for a problem unfixed at source.
The market
A race to the bottom
Because clean low-THD drives earn no verified credit, buyers reward the cheapest, dirtiest unit — punishing good engineering.
Accountability
Undiagnosable failures
A harmonic-induced trip can strand a cabin; with no measured record, the cause is undiagnosable and no one is answerable.
The honest scorecard
What real implementation requires
The reform is not "make a standard." It is to create the provision that makes a standard measurable:
- Mandate an on-site, under-load THD measurement with a power-quality analyzer at the point of common coupling — at commissioning and on a periodic cycle.
- Add a dedicated power-quality field to the lift-completion and electrical-connection reports, with a prescribed method and format so results are comparable.
- Assign and empower an accountable signatory — a DISCOM engineer, a BIS-empanelled inspector, or a NABL-accredited independent lab — equipped and funded to take the reading.
- Make a passing reading a gate to the completion / operating certificate, exactly as load and safety checks already are.
- Publish the results so a national baseline finally exists and the problem stops being invisible.
The efficiency prize is real and proven: mandatory gearless PMSM motors run 93–95% efficient versus 70–85% geared, cutting lift energy 20–40% — up to 30–50% with regenerative drives, as the Empire State Building's retrofit demonstrated (~1,200 MWh/yr).6 But none of it is bankable until someone is required to measure what each installation actually does.
Sources
- Argon Consulting — “Is Your Elevator's Power Quality Causing Problems?” (6-pulse drive THD-I 35–55%; neutral heating; transformer derating; load-dependence).
- IEEE Std 519 harmonic limits — Mirus International; Eaton (5% voltage-THD / 3% individual cap at PCC).
- IS 17515:2021, Parts 1–3 (identical to ISO 25745) — Elevator World; ISO 25745-2:2015.
- Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) 2017 — Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Govt. of India.
- IS 17900 lift & escalator safety standard, mandatory from 22 Dec 2025 — Studio Matrx.
- Gearless PMSM efficiency & savings; Empire State Building retrofit — Panda Elevator; EMF Motor.
- Power-quality / grid standards in India — Central Electricity Authority (CEA); Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS); IEC 61000 series.