Blackout or Blanked Out?
Access to reliable electricity is a Sustainable Development Goal, and key for both economic growth and individual wellbeing. Yet, in the absence of sophisticated monitoring systems, policy makers in developing countries commonly rely on surveys to measure electricity reliability and prioritize investments. The accuracy of such survey-based methods is unclear. This study built a low-cost national electricity outage monitoring network, using off-the-shelf components in Tajikistan – a country with severe electricity service constraints. The system was introduced alongside a monthly household survey called Listening to Tajikistan, which allowed benchmarking the survey summary statistics against unbiased measures. The results show that although the two measures were well correlated, the survey data suffered from significant and systematic bias. Survey respondents (i) systematically underreported the incidence and severity of electricity outages on average, but (ii) systematically overreported the incidence of outages during a period of abnormally widespread service disruption of long duration. These findings suggest that bias in survey-based measures is sensitive to the salience of outages to the respondent, and that, where feasible, automated electricity monitoring can provide more accurate quality measurement. For survey settings, the results also suggest that estimates are more accurate over short (daily) reference periods.
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper biblioteca |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
World Bank
2023-04-26
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| Subjects: | ELECTRICITY OUTAGE MONITORING, ELECTRICITY CUSTOMER SURVEY METHODS, SURVEY BIAS, AUTOMATED ELECTRICITY MONITORING, ELECTRIC SERVICE INVESTMENT, INFRASTRUCTURE ASSESSMENT, |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099543304252337204/IDU0a65f8c1f08a96046d60931d0c0767d304d63 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/39744 |
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| Summary: | Access to reliable electricity is a
Sustainable Development Goal, and key for both economic
growth and individual wellbeing. Yet, in the absence of
sophisticated monitoring systems, policy makers in
developing countries commonly rely on surveys to measure
electricity reliability and prioritize investments. The
accuracy of such survey-based methods is unclear. This study
built a low-cost national electricity outage monitoring
network, using off-the-shelf components in Tajikistan – a
country with severe electricity service constraints. The
system was introduced alongside a monthly household survey
called Listening to Tajikistan, which allowed benchmarking
the survey summary statistics against unbiased measures. The
results show that although the two measures were well
correlated, the survey data suffered from significant and
systematic bias. Survey respondents (i) systematically
underreported the incidence and severity of electricity
outages on average, but (ii) systematically overreported the
incidence of outages during a period of abnormally
widespread service disruption of long duration. These
findings suggest that bias in survey-based measures is
sensitive to the salience of outages to the respondent, and
that, where feasible, automated electricity monitoring can
provide more accurate quality measurement. For survey
settings, the results also suggest that estimates are more
accurate over short (daily) reference periods. |
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