The Technical Efficiency of Rice Husk Power Generation in Thailand: Comparing Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Abstract

Since the efficiency of rice husk biomass power plants in Thailand has never been reliably assessed, this study undertook the task of measuring the technical efficiency of Very Small Power Productions (VSPPs). The secondary data recorded in 2012 were collected from the power policy bureau in Thailand. Two concepts of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) were adopted to analyze a group of 57 biomass power plants.The results indicated that a SFA model exhibited the highest score of 0.877, followed by a Constant Return to Scale-DEA (CRS-DEA) and Variable Return to Scale-DEA (VRS-DEA) at 0.841 and 0.722, respectively. Input surpluses of capacity and rice husks were highlighted to improve unit efficiency. Moreover, we found that the efficiency scores derived from the VRS-DEA and SFA models were more consistent than those computed by the CRS-DEA and SFA models. Accomplishing the Thai government's goal of sustainable, renewable energy will encourage more utility plants to use rice husk for electricity generation.

An Analysis of Technical Efficiency for Household's Rice Production in Cambodia: A Case Study of Three Districts in Battambang Province

“…Efficiency measurement range between 0.00 and 1.00. The maximum score (1.00) represents the highest efficiency while the scores of 0.00-0.99 show a firm's inefficiency, indicating the relative displacement from the frontier 1 [15]. Most references to the concept of efficiency are based directly or indirectly on Farrell [16] which states that the efficiency can be measured in relative terms as a deviation from best practices of producers compared with producer groups.…”

“…Coelli [22] had developed the software FRONTIER 4.1c, which can be used to generate both the stochastic production frontier and the inefficiency model simultaneously. Moreover, the FRONTIER 4.1c was widely applied in different fields of research in the recent years, especially in agricultural studies like [15,17,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28] for instance.…”

An Analysis of Technical Efficiency for Household’s Rice Production in Cambodia: A Case Study of Three Districts in Battambang Province

“…Efficiency score range between 0.00 and 1.00. The maximum score (1.00) represents the highest efficiency while the scores of 0.00-0.99 show a firm's inefficiency, indicating the relative displacement from the frontier 1 [15]. Most references to the concept of efficiency are based directly or indirectly on Farrell [16] which states that "the efficiency can be measured in relative terms as a deviation from best practices of producers compared with producer groups".…”

Measuring Performance by Integrating K-Medoids With Dea: Mongolian Case

“…Efficiency is the ratio calculated from input resources and output results, to evaluate whether the use of input resources is effectively employed for the outcome or not (Azadeh, Ghaderi, Miran, Ebrahimipour, & Suzuki, 2007;Ueasin, Liao, & Wongchai, 2015). The objective of efficiency measurement is to detect weak areas so that appropriate efforts can be devoted to improve performance.…”