Benchmarking service quality in UK electricity distribution networks

Water Benchmarking in Buildings: A Systematic Review on Methods and Benchmarks for Water Conservation

Water conservation is essential to sustainable development, and among human activities, buildings are responsible for a significant portion of total water consumption. Therefore, we present a systematic review that aims to search for valuable contributions from benchmarking and their potential significance to water conservation. The relevance of performing such a review is to support the research in the field, organise information, and highlight both the lack of data and valuable results in specific building types. Benchmarking highlights best performance buildings, while it also classifies performances, which allows developing interventions for different buildings. Seventy-two documents on the environmental performance of buildings were reviewed, and a variety of methods, metering procedures, and indicators were found as valuable data for water-saving initiatives. In addition to a systematic search in SCOPUS, searches were made in Science Direct and Google Scholar databases. Although the main challenge in this matter lies in the lack of procedures standardisation, it was found that performing benchmarking is relevant for accurately developing water conservation initiatives. Gains of over five million m3 per year in a set of buildings or above 151 thousand m3 per year in a single factory were found, which indicate the existing potential for water conservation.

The dynamics of Indian energy mix: a two-phase analysis

Purpose

The Indian power sector is dominated by coal. Environmental awareness and advances in techno-economic front have led to a slow but steady shift towards greener alternatives. The distributions of both fossil fuel resources and renewable energy potential are not uniform across the states. Paper attempts to answer how the states are performing in the sector and how the renewable energy and conventional resources are affecting the dynamics.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors employ a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) to rank the performance of Indian states in the power sector. Multi-stage analysis opens up the DEA black-box through disaggregating power sector in two logical sub-sectors. The performance is evaluated from the point-of-view of policy formulating and implementing agencies. Further, an econometric analysis using seemingly unrelated regression equations (SURE) is conducted to estimate the determinants of total and industrial per-capita electricity consumption.

Findings

Efficiency scores obtained from the first phase of analysis happens to be a significant explanatory variable for power consumption. The growth in electricity consumption, which is necessary for economic wellbeing, is positively affected by both renewable and non-renewable sources; but conventional sources have a larger impact on per-capita consumption. Yet, the share of renewables in the energy mix has positive elasticity. Hence, the findings are encouraging, because development in storage technologies, falling costs and policy interventions are poised to give further impetus to renewable sources.

Originality/value

The study is one of the very few where entire spectrum of the Indian power sector is evaluated from efficiency perspective. Further, the second phase analysis gives additional relevant insights on the sector.

An analysis for service quality enhancement in electricity utility sector of India by SEM

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to develop a new model – namely service quality enhancement – in the electricity utility sector of south India and to test this model's fitness.

Design/methodology/approach

– Effective customer satisfaction investigation is a very important precondition for a power supply enterprise to win in the market competition. The problems that need to be solved for the power supply enterprise are how to use advanced and practiced methods to evaluate electricity customer satisfaction, and how to use results of the evaluation to improve their service. Planning and operating modern electric power systems involves several interlinked and complex tasks. In this paper, structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to the electricity utility service model to verify service quality satisfaction. To determine the scope of the electricity industry and its relationship with overall service quality, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted and a standard questionnaire was designed for all customers in different groups of stakeholders (i.e. domestic, industrial, agricultural, public organization). To investigate the respondents’ perceptions regarding the service quality of the electricity utility industry, 200 questionnaires were sent, and from these 169 responses were collected, consisting of 53 responses from the domestic sector, 43 industrial, 30 agricultural, and the remaining 43 from public organization consumers. Then a model was constructed using SEM and tested by Amos 18 to verify the casual relationship between the measured dimensions and the electricity service quality.

Findings

– The results indicate that electricity service has a direct relationship with the dimensions of reliability, tangibility, empathy responsiveness, assurance, security and stability.

Originality/value

– In this era electricity is the vital need, but due to regular interruptions in the electricity service, customer dissatisfaction is the measured issue. At the current time, the Indian electricity utility sector enjoys a monopolistic business. Therefore, there is hardly any effort to improve the service quality in this sector due to a lack of administrative pressure and reformation measures. Indian electricity consumers face many quality-related problems as far as the distribution of electricity is concerned. In order to assess service quality in electricity distribution, a survey has been conducted in this work to extract quality constructs from a customer's perspective. One of the contributions of this work is that on the basis of results obtained from factor analysis of the survey data, an instrument has been proposed for the first time in the Indian context, consisting of seven dimensions (reliability, tangibility, empathy, responsiveness, assurance, security and stability). This instrument would help to measure the service quality of the Indian electricity utility sectors, and it provides insights for managers and administrators to set a service standard to fill the service gap. SEM is a tool is used for confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. It is used to test and validate standard instruments. Through confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis using SEM, the proposed service quality model has been tested and validated for practical acceptance in Indian electricity industry.