Development of an evaluation method on using electric heating in cold rural areas of China

Abstract

Responding to the national “double carbon” policy, rural areas in China are upgrading their heating methods. Since rural areas are more dispersed than urban areas, centralized heating is not easy to use. Therefore, electric heating has become one of the major solutions. However, relevant studies on electric heating usage in rural areas are limited. In this study, therefore, research methods including literature review, questionnaire, and expert consultation have been adopted, to decide relevant indicators reflecting the suitability of using electric heating in cold rural areas in China. Then, both expert questionnaire and analytic hierarchy process were used to decide the weight of these indicators, with a hybrid model established based on the gray whitening weight clustering method. Finally, a case village was selected to validate the performance of the model, with 20 households involved. The main results from this study include: 1) the primary indicators were technology, economy, comfort, safety, aesthetic portability, and environmental protection; 2) the weights of these indicators were 0.1617, 0.3158, 0.2337, 0.1846, 0.0516, and 0.0525; 3) the evaluation result for the case village was ‘suitable’, which was consistent with the villagers' actual subjective evaluation results. The evaluation method developed in this study can effectively reflect the actual needs of people living in cold rural areas of China and can help to achieve low-carbon heating in rural areas.