*2.1. Methodology*

The potential of cogeneration in the whole industrial sector of a country can be obtained if the potential of cogeneration of each industrial plant in which cogeneration can be adopted is determined. The methods for sizing cogeneration plants for specific types of industries are based on their annual energy requirements (normally, heat for the industrial process and/or plant operation, since producing surplus heat will otherwise be wasted). Furthermore, producing electricity is not a priority in the industrial plants in the country due to its relatively low cost (i.e., due to subsidies). Table 2 presents a list of works devoted to determining the cogeneration capacity in specific types of industrial plants. These works served as the basis to compute the potential cogeneration capacity in industrial plants in Ecuador. In addition, a report on the potential of cogeneration in Spain [37] and a report by the Office of Environment and Heritage New South Wales [38] were used. Moreover, for sizing cogeneration plants, it is necessary to define the cogeneration schemes suitable to specific types of industries and the respective fuels available. In this study, such schemes are shown in Appendix A, while the main equations used are provided in Appendix B. Then, the potential of each industrial plant was added to obtain the potential of cogeneration by cluster of industries and the whole country's potential. The methodology adopted consisted of five stages (summarized in Figure 3) that are detailed in the following subsections.

**Figure 2.** Typical curves of electricity (above) and fuel (below) consumption of two industrial companies (**M** and **N**), taken as examples of yearly (approximately constant) energy demand in most Ecuadorian industrial plants.

**Table 2.** Some works on cogeneration computing methods for different types of industries.


**Figure 3.** Methodology framework to compute the potential of cogeneration and the resulting impacts in Ecuador.

#### 2.1.1. Data Collection and Energy Consumption Baseline

The tasks described in Sections 2.1.1.1 and 2.1.1.2 aimed to determine which industrial plants could adopt cogeneration (or trigeneration) in the country. For this, information on electricity and fuel consumption was used to define a baseline that allows selecting prospective industrial companies. This information was obtained from two official sources, the Agency of Regulation and Control of Electricity—ARCONEL (in Spanish Agencia de Regulación y Control de Electricidad) and the Agency of Regulation and Control of Hydrocarbon Fuels—ARCH (in Spanish Agencia de Regulación y Control de Hidrocarburos), which are the institutions in charge of regulating and controlling the distribution and use of electricity and fossil-derived fuels, respectively. The data used corresponded to 2015 and were the information available at the time that this study was conducted (2017 and 2018).
