2021

Ecuador's energy mix has greatly reduced its dependency on fossil fuels the last 15 years, down to a marginal role (5%) in electricity generation in 2017. The development plan for the Ecuadorian power network aims to keep adding hydropower to meet the increasing demand. A prospective lifecycle assessment (LCA) of the future power network (2012–2050) can determine the feasibility of the development plan and its environmental sustainability in the long run.

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems provide the people working/living inside buildings with ‘conditioned air’ so that they will have a comfortable and safe environment. Thermal comfort is considered as an aspect of a sustainable building in almost all sustainable building evaluation methods and tools. In fact, in the building sector, HVAC systems represent between 40 and 60% of energy consumption. In this paper, two thermal comfort methods have been experimentally analysed (Predicted Mean Vote or the so-called Fanger’s method, and the Adaptive Comfort Method).

In this paper, we use the correlation between the average wind speed and the elevation above sea level to present a regression model for calculating the average wind speed and evaluating the wind potential in the southern region of Ecuador. After obtaining the regression model, an adjustment factor based on the topographic slope has been included, mainly since the wind speed could vary largely as it blows across the lower slope regions or intermediate hills of mountains.