A breakdown of energy consumption in an underground station

•The electricity consumed by an underground station amounts to 217.64kW/h/m2/year.•The lighting system dominates the energy consumption (37%).•Illuminated advertising signs (14%) and ventilation (14%) are also major consumers.•The findings are useful for planning energy conservation measures in metro stations. Underground transportation systems are big energy consumers and have significant impacts on energy consumption at a regional scale. The literature has revealed that the energy consumption for non-traction purposes may be of the same magnitude as the energy used to move rolling stock, and in some cases even greater. However, most of the research conducted so far has focused on the energy demand of rolling stock. This paper investigates the electricity consumption of an underground metro station using data from on-site surveys and measurements. With an average consumption of 217.64kWh/m2/year, the breakdown revealed that the lighting system dominated the underground station's energy consumption (37%). Illuminated advertising signs were found to be responsible for 14% of the total energy consumption, and ventilation accounted for another 14%. The rest of the energy consumption was attributed to systems such as mobile phone signal antenna (12%), the vertical transportation system (8%) and small power devices (5%). Accurate information on energy consumption for non-traction usage is useful for future implementation of energy conservation measures in underground stations, which could result in a reduction of operating costs in the long run.