Assessment of electrical saving from energy efficiency programs in the residential sector in Mexicali, Mexico

The aim of the present work is to gather energy indicators and propose actions that achieve a significant reduction in the energy consumption of single-family house in the city of Mexicali, Mexico so that those indicators can be successfully extended and applied to other regions of the country with similar climatic conditions. To this purpose, a sampling frame of 300 Mexicali residents have been studied; by taking direct measurements and applying questionnaires to gather information on construction features, energy usage and users' income level. The average annual consumption of a home in Mexicali is 8193 kWh -73% in the summer season-. This means that 67% of users here allocate more than 6% of their income to pay their electricity bills. It was demonstrated that 39% of households have oversized air conditioning equipment, and that replacing their old low-efficiency air conditioning equipment leads to an annual savings of 32% in energy consumption. In addition, it was established that Mexicali has a 0.82 of correlation of the monthly energy consumption with all the users in the country with the same electricity rate.