ABSTRACT: The energy consumption for thermal conditioning of urban dwellings located in a zone of arid mesothermal climate is studied to identify its incidence in the household energy structure. The study’s object is the city of San Juan (Argentina), located in the South American arid diagonal. The hypothetical comsumption of natural/liquefied gas and electricity, per dwelling unit is estimated processing relieved data and calculating the bioclimatic design strategies, if it had been bioclimatically designed. It is concluded that the use of fossil energy for domestic thermal conditioning, contitutes about half of electricty and gas consumption in Winter and 60% of electricity in the Summer. If the housing had been bioclimatically designed, savings in electricity consumption would be 84% in winter and 46% in summer. For gas, the savings would reach 84%.
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