How Much Detail Should We Use to Compute Societal Aggregated Exergy Efficiencies?

Miguel Palma, Tânia Sousa and Zeus Guevara
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Miguel Palma: Maretec, Environment and Energy Scientific Area, DEM, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Tânia Sousa: Maretec, Environment and Energy Scientific Area, DEM, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Zeus Guevara: Maretec, Environment and Energy Scientific Area, DEM, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: The current method used for calculating societal aggregated exergy efficiencies is reviewed. Cooling is introduced as an end-use category; conversion efficiencies for heating processes are obtained for each energy carrier; and electricity shares per end-use are retrieved for each sector, improving the accuracy of the estimated values of aggregated exergy efficiencies. We show that: (1) cooling uses are a relevant end-use in Portugal and that their introduction decreased overall efficiency by 3.4% in 2009; and (2) disaggregating the heating second law efficiencies for each energy carrier has a significant effect on the aggregated efficiencies of the country, decreasing aggregated efficiency by 1.3% in 2009. We studied two other factors that showed no significant impact on aggregated exergy efficiency: a technological lag of 10 years in the efficiency of stationary mechanical drive devices and the use of a year-specific ambient temperature to compute exergy efficiencies of heating processes.

Keywords: energy; exergy; efficiency; useful exergy; energy use; energy carriers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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