The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec) surveyed which household appliances account for the highest gas and electricity consumption in Argentine households, identifying characteristics such as age and efficiency class, as well as their distribution by region and income.
The appliances with the highest consumption are those intended for cooking and preserving food, heating and refrigeration, washing machines, communication and entertainment equipment, lightingamong others.
The work on the Home Use of Energy It is a survey considered key to carry out the balance of useful energy (BEU), which will allow knowing the consumption patterns of Argentines for the design of energy policies.
The report released this Monday is the result of a section that was added to the 2017-2018 edition of the National Household Expenditure Survey (ENGHo) that allowed the incorporation of a special module, with national coverage, dedicated to the home use of energy.
In addition to inquiring about the possession and use of household equipment, both household appliances and gas appliances, and computer equipment, including lights and vehicles, data was also recorded on some characteristics of the devices used, such as age and efficiency class.
Likewise, an attempt was made to determine the intensity of use (frequency and number of hours) and the type of fuel used, both nationally and by region.
What does the survey say?
The report revealed that the main equipment used for cooking food is gas appliances, which in kitchen version, stove or gas oven represent 85.4% of the total (The Northeast NEA region has the lowest percentage: 64.0%), while 17.6% use an electric kitchen, stove or oven.
The use of gas appliances does not present significant differences by income level, on the other hand, in electrical appliances, it is observed that, at a higher level, greater use: in quintiles 1 and 2 it registers values close to 14.0% and in quintile 5 it amounts to 24.4% of households.
For food preservation 88.5% of households use refrigerators with freezers and 12.0%, without a freezer, but 42.0% of the former are between 5 and 10 years old, while 27.7% are less than 5 years old, and the regional situations do not present significant differences.
According to the level of household income, 82.2% of those in the first quintile use refrigerators with freezers, while this percentage increases by 11.8 percentage points (pp) in those in the fifth quintile.
The use of some type of equipment for cooling the environment reaches the 84.8% of households, within which the lowest percentage is held by Patagonia (34.6%); in the rest of the regions it exceeds 75.0%, and reaches almost 92.0% in Greater Buenos Aires (GBA).
#DataINDEC
In 2017-2018, the use of automatic washing machines reached 82.1% of urban households with the highest income in Argentina, compared to 45.2% of those with the lowest income. https://t.co/Qr1Z0I7PqW pic.twitter.com/1mJYtrqGeo— INDEC Argentina (@INDECArgentina) December 26, 2022
The use of air conditioning in general (regardless of the type of device, split or window type), reaches the 47.1% of householdsand in those with the lowest income (quintile 1), the use of split is 18.5%, and in those with higher purchasing power it reaches 61.7%.
77.9% of households use equipment to heat the home, of which 40.9% declared using gas stoves and 25.6% electric stoves.
Patagonia, the region with the lowest temperatures, presents an almost exclusive use of gas stoves, 79.6% and only 5.2% are electric.
In households in the first quintile, 60.3% use at least one device for heating; Said percentage reaches 89.9% in those belonging to the highest income quintile; and the use of gas stoves increases steadily with the level of household income: in the lowest quintile it reaches 19.1% and increases to over 50% in households in quintiles 4 and 5.
In relation to the production of sanitary hot water, 35.0% of the country’s households use gas water heaters and 24.0% gas water heaters, while the proportion of those who use electrical devices reaches 10.7% for water heaters and at 15.4% for water heaters.
Among the regions, the use of gas water heaters reached the highest percentage in homes in the Cuyo regions, with 34.9%, and then in the Northwest (NOA), with 31.1%, while it decreased among those that reside in Patagonia (12.4%).
The electric water heater presents the highest value in the NEA (26.8%), while the regions that use it the least are GBA and Cuyo, with values close to 11.0% of households.
96% of households in the country declared having at least one television, reaching percentages higher than 92.4% in all regions.
Although the difference by income levels is low, it becomes relevant depending on the characteristics of the devices: those with LED/LCD technology are present in 61.2% of the homes belonging to the first quintile, and their values increase progressively until they reach the 89.4% in those of the fifth quintile.
Regarding the use of light fixtures, fluorescent lights are the type of lighting predominantly used in homes, with 52.3%, and Patagonia is the region where it is used the most (65.3%), and the GBA registers the lowest value (49.8%).
LED technology lamps have a share of 32.1%. The Pampas region presents the highest participation (35.9%) and, in the opposite direction, NOA and NEA are located, with 20.2% and 20.9% of households, respectively.
Finally, incandescent and halogen lamps represent 15.6% of the total luminaires used.
While in the homes belonging to the first quintile, 26.0% of the luminaires used are incandescent and halogen lamps, in the homes of the fifth quintile they constitute 13.3%.
On the contrary, the use of LED lamps predominates in high-income households, reaching 40% in the fifth quintile.
