by Shane Henson — April 9, 2012—KONE, a leader in the elevator and escalator industry, has been chosen by Grubb and Ellis|Levy Beffort to modernize elevators with supportive technologies in the Oklahoma Tower Building located in Oklahoma City.
The modernization project will feature the KONE Polaris Destination Control System (DCS) hybrid configuration on 12 of the elevators, making Oklahoma Tower the first building in the Oklahoma City region with this technology.
Once the KONE Polaris system is installed, tenants and everyone who visits the building will find that they get to their destinations using the elevators much more quickly. The system uses artificial intelligence to optimize elevator traffic patterns. Building tenants and guests will be able to select their destination before being guided to an assigned elevator, which groups them together with other passengers headed to similar floors. The system’s increased carrying capacity not only reduces overall riding time for passengers, but streamlines boarding as well.
The building’s control system will use a DCS hybrid configuration, meaning the main floors will feature the new Destination Operating Panels, while all other floors as well as elevator cars will have conventional landing keypads. This configuration is beneficial for improving the people flow in heavily used floors, such as the first floor lobby.
The modernization project will also update 13 of the building’s elevator control systems to KONE ReSolve with Unity Drives. This technology is specifically designed for existing DC gearless elevators and delivers significant improvements in energy performance using low harmonic distortion and a near-unity power factor capability. The technology also enables full line regeneration of energy to significantly reduce energy consumption.
