Helena F. Naspolini and Ricardo Rüther’s article, “Impacts of the active power demand measurement-time resolution on the financial attractiveness of domestic solar hot water systems,” was published in Renewable Energy in August 2019. Publisher Elsevier has partnered with the Copyright Center RightsLink service to offer a variety of options for reusing this content. An independent article discusses the increasing demand for domestic solar hot water systems (DSHWS) and their financial attractiveness.
In their work, the authors investigate and evaluate the economic feasibility of introducing solar water heaters in low-income residential buildings in Brazil. The peculiarity of the article is that the study of the authors aims to resolve urgent needs by increasing the demand for goods (Naspolini & Rüther, 2019). The article’s main purpose is to assess the impact of the temporary resolution of electricity demand measurement on the financial attractiveness of DSHWS.
The results of the authors’ study show that the implementation of DSHWS resulted in energy savings, which means that there is potential to finance the implementation of the systems. On the other hand, according to the article, power consumption measurement with a 15-minute time resolution, widely accepted in the Brazilian electricity sector, is not enough to assess financial attractiveness correctly (Naspolini & Rüther, 2019). Thus, if one considers the authors’ goal to assess the feasibility of increasing demand, the authors have achieved their goal. At the same time, the study results are rather a failure, as they show low coefficients.
I enjoyed Naspolini and Rüther’s research as the authors look at different aspects of people’s daily lives to explore the right strategy to increase demand for a product. It is important because demand rises based on the preferences of the consumers (Mrázová & Neary, 2017). In addition, the authors very clearly demonstrate through the percentage. Although the authors received low scores, this suggests that further cross-sectional studies are possible in this area.
References
Mrázová, M., & Neary, J. P. (2017). Not so demanding: Demand structure and firm behavior. American Economic Review, 107(12), 3835–3874. Web.
Naspolini, H. F., & Rüther, R. (2019). Impacts of the active power demand measurement-time resolution on the financial attractiveness of Domestic Solar Hot Water Systems. Renewable Energy, 139, 336–345. Web.