Artículo Científico / Scientific Paper |
|
|
|
||
|
pISSN: 1390-650X / eISSN: 1390-860X |
|
Impactos en el consumo de energÍa elÉctrica por el uso de refrigeradores eficientes - caso Ecuador |
Nelson G. Jara1,*, Fran Z. Reinoso1, Cesar Isaza-Roldán2, Juan Leonardo Espinoza3 |
Abstract |
Resumen |
||
This article presents an analysis of the impacts that the Renova Refrigerator program will have, on electricity consumption in Ecuador; the main objective of this program is to replace refrigerators that are more than 10 years old with efficient class “A“ domestic refrigerators. The development and implementation of the program reduces energy consumption by 8%, motivates people to use electric energy efficiently and encourages the national industry to use new technologies, which increases productivity and domestic product consumption. Additionally, in compliance with the current Ecuadorian and international regulations, the variation in electricity consumption of a domestic refrigerator is evaluated when it runs at the different temperatures determined by the thermal floors, which are very distinct in the Coast, Sierra and eastern regions of Ecuador. |
En este artículo se presenta un análisis de los impactos que tendrá el programa «Renova Refrigerador», en el consumo de energía eléctrica en el Ecuador; programa que tiene como principal objetivo la renovación de refrigeradores domésticos eficientes etiquetados con A, por refrigeradores ineficientes y con una vida útil que ha sobrepasado los diez años. Su desarrollo e implementación contribuye a la reducción de consumo energético en un 8 %, motiva a la población a utilizar la energía eléctrica de manera eficiente e impulsa a la industria nacional en el uso de nuevas tecnologías incrementando así la productividad y el consumo de productos nacionales. Bajo el cumplimiento de la normativa vigente ecuatoriana y sus similares internacionales; se considera, además, la variación en el consumo eléctrico que presenta un refrigerador doméstico cuando trabaja a distintas temperaturas, determinadas por los pisos térmicos, marcados plenamente en el Ecuador por las regiones Costa, Sierra y Oriente.
|
||
1,*Grupo de Investigación y Desarrollo en Simulación Optimización y Toma de Decisiones, Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Ecuador. Autor para correspondencia : njara@ups.edu.ec. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0299-7089, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8228-2336. 2Centro de Investigación en Refrigeración y Aire Acondicionado, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín, Colombia. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5902-6411 3Grupo de Investigación en Energía y Sistemas Eléctricos, Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7450-2084
|
|||
53 |
to identify a series of events that destabilized the country’s economy and also affected its energy sector. In addition, some government policies did not have a major impact on the development of the sector, paralyzed projects that had studies underway and led to a lack of institutionalization of public energy companies. Ecuador was affected by natural disasters including the following: the El Niño phenomenon in 1982-83 and in 1997-98 that caused serious problems for the population, an earthquake in 1987 that interrupted the production and export of oil for several months; the Josefina disaster in the south of the country in 1993 that seriously affected the Paute hydroelectric complex, and severe low river water levels that contributed to a prolonged energy crisis which included electric power rationing. In addition, the permanent diplomatic and military tension with Peru resulted in open armed conflicts on two occasions between 1981 and 1995 [7]. Furthermore, the Ecuadorian Institute of Electrification (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Electrificación - INECEL) developed a systematic work on urban and rural electrification starting in 1976 [8], forcing the government to take strong economic measures that also affected the energy sector. In July of 2007, by Executive Decree No. 475, the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy (Ministerio de Electricidad y Energía Renovable - MEER) was created. From its various agencies, MEER manages various plans, programs and projects related to energy efficiency and their impacts on energy consumption [2]. The specific case cited in this paper is the Renova Refrigerator program related to the use of efficient refrigerators in Ecuador.
2. Status of the electricity sector and household refrigeration appliances in Ecuador.
Nowadays, Ecuador produces renewable energy from hydraulic, solar, wind and cogeneration thermal sources and non-renewable energy from sources such as thermal turbo-gas, thermal turbo-steam and internal combustion engines [9, 10]. The Coordinating Ministry of Strategic Sectors (Ministerio Coordinador de Sectores Estratégicos - MICSE) has prepared energy assessments for Ecuador where the energy flows are accounted for in each stage of the energy chain, from the time of production or extraction of the primary sources to the acquisition of secondary sources, including an intermediate process of transformation [11]. Tables 1, 2 and 3 show the statistical information of the effective electricity generation capacity (MW), energy delivered for public service (GWh) and energy consumption |
Table 1. Effective electricity generation capacity in Ecuador. [12]
Table 2. Energy delivered for public service. [12].
Table 3. Energy consumption for public service and collections in millions of dollars. [12].
|
Table 4 shows the concession areas of the power distribution companies in Ecuador and their business unit abbreviations.
Table 4. Concession areas of power distribution companies in Ecuador. [13]
Figure 1 shows the power distribution companies of Ecuador and their geographical locations.
Figure 1. Identification of energy distribution companies in Ecuador.
2.1. Electricity supply growth in Ecuador.
In Ecuador, the National Development Plan (PND) is the instrument governing public policies, programs and projects, as well as investments and allocation of resources. In 2008 in Montecristi the new constitution of the Republic of Ecuador was established, mainly based on positions to be taken to promote social, economic |
and territorial equity. As well as principles which set as a priority the eradication of poverty ware raised, promoting sustainable and equitable distribution of wealth and development, in this sense the national development plan became the National Plan for Good Life (Plan Nacional para el Buen Vivir - PNBV). As part of the proposed strategies for achieving the PNBV objectives, changing the energy matrix is essential, and encompasses the following components:
• To increase the share of renewable energies in the generation matrix, mainly through hydroelectric projects. • To reduce petroleum derivatives imports through construction of the Pacific Refinery. • To encourage efficient energy use by reducing the consumption of petroleum derivatives by residential customers.
In order to execute these components, the new Master Plan for Electrification of Ecuador 2013-2022 (Plan Maestro de Electrificación - PME) was formulated, it seeks to modernize and expand the electricity system, given the availability of sufficient energy reserves to ensure the natural growth of domestic demand, the addition of new loads entailed in changing the country’s energy matrix, the opportunity to optimize operating costs offered by the current international connections, and the opportunity to increase the transfer volumes enabling the country to participate proactively in the regional electricity market. In 2013, Ecuador’s electricity network had installed a power generation capacity of 5,100 MW, of this the 46% corresponded to renewable energies and the 54% to thermal energies. In order to meet much of the projected demand, new hydroelectric projects are under construction for an additional capacity of 4,165 MW; of these, eight are considered flagship projects, equivalent to 2,362 MW. These projects, located on the Amazon and Pacific sides of the divide, are currently operating, adding more capacity in 2016 and 2017. The actions above had their reason for being primarily implemented by the different energy efficiency policies in the country during the last 5 years. As a special case and intended to eliminate the petroleum liquid gas subsidy, the energy efficiency program for induction cooking is being implemented, it will have a direct impact on demand in the residential sector. This will require an average annual power of 5,457 GWh by late 2022. Furthermore, in the period between 1999 and 2005, the growth of the effective capacity from renewable sources was almost zero, while in the period from 2006 to 2011, it was 4.6%. In addition, the effective capacity from non-renewable internal combustion systems grew 16.4% in the period of 2005-2011; in turbo-gas |
systems, it grew 16% [14]. It is important to mention that since 2013, projects with renewable energy sources connected to the National System have been incorporated, such as the Villonaco wind project and several photovoltaic parks. 2.2. Electricity demand in Ecuador. The electricity demand in the period of 1999-2011 had a growth rate of 5.8%. By February 2015, the total consumption, including technical and non-technical distribution losses, was 21,352.70 GWh, of which 6,537.42 GWh were from residential consumption, 3,873.93 GWh were from commercial consumption, 5,834.17 GWh were from industrial consumption, 1,046.39 GWh were from street lighting consumption, and 1,882 GWh were from other consumption sources [12]. The technical and non-technical distribution losses in the electrical consumption were 1,736.08 GWh (8.13%) and 892.70 GWh (4.18%), respectively (see Table 3). According to the 2010 Population and Housing Census by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos - INEC), the total percentage of dwellings with electric power reached 94.77%, in the urban area, while it was 89.03% in rural areas [15]. The Guayas province has the highest number of subscribers, the same as in the year 2010, when 43,548 households without access to electricity it ware recorded, which corresponds to approximately 5% of the provincial total. These problems are also evident in other provinces, especially those that are located in the eastern part of the country. In this regard the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy - MEER According to the institutional strategic plan 2014-2017, aims to cover 96,88% of the national electricity service of the public distribution. Until 2010, the characterization of the consumption of end uses of electricity for residential customers of Ecuador had not been updated, therefore it had only the study conducted in 1991 and data was insufficient to be used as a basis for the development of the domestic refrigerators renewal plan. For this reason in 2010 MEER, through consultancy, conducted a new analysis of some cities’ energy consumption in lighting, cooling, water heating and other (in this category is cooking with electricity) and determined that residential consumption in Ecuador for the 2010 represented 35% of the national electrical consumption [16]. The development of the study of end uses of energy was based on the measurement and construction of load curves and use perception surveys. The results showed that increased consumption was generated by the use of domestic refrigeration equipment, with an average of 43.2% in relation to the residential consumption. |
Table 5 shows a summary of the results obtained in the period from April to September 2014, according to data provided by EERCS. These results are based on the samples of new users that are accepted per the calculation method. The period mentioned above is the one with the most available data that clearly shows that the program implementation generates savings of approximately 30 kWh/month per subscriber or US$3 per month.
Table 5. Savings at EERCS due to the 2014 implementation of the Renova Refrigerator program for the analyzed period. Source: Energy consumption data of subscribers participating in the Renova Refrigerator program.
Table 6 details the savings behavior by energy rate. The average savings is 12.17 kWh/month for a subscriber of the dignity fare (subscribers who consume up to 110 kWh/month in the Sierra and 130 kWh/-month in the Coast, for which the power distributors charge $0.04 per kWh) compared to 28 kWh/month for a subscriber with consumption between 110 and 220 kWh per month. This result clearly shows that the higher the consumption is, the greater the savings are. Figure 2 shows the expected savings per base month for the Renova Refrigerator program according to the type of consumer and the region.
Figure 2. Expected savings per month basis for the program RENOVA Refrigerator.
Table 7 shows the calculation of lost savings, weighted using the allocation data of refrigerators for |
Table 6. Behavior of savings by energy rate.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Table 7. Expected savings per base month for the Renova Refrigerator program.
|
Figure 3. Allocation of domestic refrigerators, by Distribution Company - Coast region.
The total number of refrigerators for each company is taken into account; it is also assumed that the weather will adversely affect the savings. Reduced savings are therefore expected because the Coast region has a greater amount of units to install. Furthermore, a domestic refrigerator in warm weather consumes between 15 and 45 more electric power depending on its size, type and years of operation. By comparing the average savings values in Table 6 with the expected values for the Sierra region in Figure |
Figure 4. Allocation of domestic refrigerators, by Distribution Company - Sierra region.
Therefore, it can be said that there is a range of savings from a "real" scenario (Table 6) to an "optimistic" or expected scenario (Figure 2). With this approach, the goals of calculating the expected savings may have a significant variance, likely resulting in savings less than the 48% initially estimated (see Table 7). Figure 5. Electric energy savings expected. Optimistic scenario - Coast region.
Figures 7 and 8 show a projection of the energy savings for the 9 distribution companies in the Sierra |
region of Ecuador for the two proposed scenarios, optimistic or expected (Figure 7) and real or measured (Figure 8), based on the data of Table 6.
Figure 6. Electric energy savings expected. Real scenario - Coast region.
The total number of refrigerators for each company is taken into account; in addition, it is assumed that the weather will have a positive effect on the savings, which are expected to increase by 45%. Adding the savings of the Coast and Sierra regions from Figures 5 and 6, for the real scenario, there would be a national total savings of 9.892 MWh/month and 118.704 MWh/year. Figure 7. Electric energy savings expected. Optimistic scenario - Sierra region. Source: Authors. |
Figure 8. Electric energy savings expected. Real scenario - Sierra region. |
Table 8. Distribution and progress of the Renova Refrigerator program. [18]
|