Not There Yet: Mapping Inhibitions to Solar Energy Utilisation by Households in African Informal Urban Neighbourhoods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the manuscript "Not There Yet: Mapping inhibitions to solar energy utilisation by households in African informal urban neighbourhoods", Manuscript ID: sustainability-644704 that has been submitted for publication in the Sustainability MDPI Journal. In this paper, the authors analyze the implementation and spreading of the solar photovoltaic technology within the households located in Nigeria's second largest urban agglomeration, Kano.

The manuscript under review is documented and generally well structured. However, I have identified a series of aspects that in my opinion must be addressed in order to bring a benefit to the manuscript. I consider that the article will benefit if the authors take into account the following remarks and address within the manuscript the signaled issues:

Remark 1: The main strong point of the manuscript consists in the fact that it approaches a very interesting topic for the experts in the field.

Remark 2: The main weak point of the manuscript under review consists in the details regarding the developed survey. Therefore, at the Lines 169-173, the authors state: "For the purpose of sampling of the study locations, two diagonal lines crossing each other were drawn on the map of Kano Metropolis, thereby dividing the map into equal four parts. Consequently, five (5) points representing major neighbourhoods were chosen at random from each of the four segments, thereby making a total of twenty (20) neighbourhoods. Afterwards, ten respondents (Solar PV adopters) were selected from each locality and thus giving a total of 200 respondents." It will benefit the manuscript if the authors insert a picture with the layout and the contours of the terrain, highlighting the analyzed location, the drawn diagonal lines, the four equal zones, the five chosen points of interest, the 20 neighborhoods (eventually using as source the Google Maps web mapping service or any other similar approach).

Remark 3: The authors should also provide more details regarding the questionnaire format, its questions, the number of valid returned questionnaires and the questionnaire survey time. I consider that the questionnaire format, its questions and the datasets will be a valuable addition to the article if they are provided as supplementary materials to the manuscript as the "Materials and Methods" section must provide all the necessary details as to allow other researchers to verify, reproduce, discuss and extend the obtained scientific results based on the obtained published results.

Remark 4: Regarding the dataset, I consider that the authors should explain in the paper and justify if the 200 participants constitute a representative sample of the population from the considered area, in what concerns its structure: age, gender, occupation, educational level, family size. Can the authors mention how much of their model is being influenced by the used data or to which extent the model can be easily applied to other situations, when the datasets are different? In this way, the authors could highlight more the generalization capability of their approach in order to be able to justify a wider contribution that has been brought to the current state of art.

Remark 5: Moreover, the information provided about the questionnaire, the respondents and the responses must be precisely anchored in a certain moment of time taking into account the fact that it is possible that a part of the information might change in time, otherwise the whole study risks becoming inconsistent and irrelevant.

Remark 6: The "Materials and Methods" section. It will benefit the paper to specify details regarding the version numbers for the software and the detailed hardware configuration used within the research, along with the elements already depicted.

Remark 7: The "Materials and Methods" section. In the "Materials and Methods" section, the authors should devise a flowchart that depicts the steps that they have processed in developing their research and most important of all, the final target.

Remark 8: The "Results and Discussion" section. In the "Results and Discussion" section the authors should highlight current limitations of their study, and briefly mention some precise directions that they intend to follow in their future research work.

Remark 9: The "Results and Discussion" section. The paper will benefit if the authors make a step further, beyond their approach and provide an insight at the end of the "Results and Discussion" section regarding what they consider to be, based on the obtained results, the most important, appropriate and concrete actions that the decisional factors and all the involved parties should take in order to benefit from the results of the research conducted within the manuscript as to attain the ultimate goal of sustainability.

Remark 10: Other issues.

a) Line 28: "… process of implementing SDG 7 ". Even if it is widely known, the SDG 7 acronym (as any other acronyms) should be explained the first time when it appears in the manuscript.

b) Lines 195-196, Table 1: The measuring units of the variables specified within the table must be specified.

c) Lines 211-212: "This indicates that there is an increase the in adoption of renewables in recent years…" Please express more clearly this sentence, in the current form its meaning is unclear.

Author Response

Resonses to Reviewer 1.

We  sincerely appreciate reviewer 1 for going many lenghts to postively and constructively comment  on our paper identifying ot strenghts and weaknesses.

Remark 2: the map with the transect lines that we used is given below, but we actually used it for desktop purpose only. We didn’t use it in the paper for its legibility issues (see it below) if it were to be published. Nevertheless, a map of the study points has been created and added between lines 198-199. But more detils on this has been added in the methods section. We have also aded the questionaire used to supplematary list.

Remark 3:

In section 2.4 line 199 – 206 of the revised paper have responded to the issues raised by the review.

Remark 4:

Additional responses were also given in section 2.3 where additional reference to justify the sampling adequacy for this type of study is given see line 188.

Remark 5:

The study timeframe is given in line 192 of the revised paper

Remark 6:

We have also added the suggested details in lines 210 -211.

Remark 7:

A study flow chart has been inserted between line 212 - 213

Remark 8:

We have added study limitations in lines 372-376

Remark 9:

We have included the study direction between lines 384 to 387

Remark 10:

a-We have provided full meaning of abbreviations at first instance

b-Table 1 is qualitative in nature hence no common units

c-Lines 211-212 has been revised and is on line 241

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I have read your paper with great interest. 

I have three remarks to improve your paper

Add a (explicit) research question, hypothesis of conceptual model to your paper. At this moment is it rather hidden and implicit.  Please substantiate the sample size. Only referring to an online (unknown?) tool feels a little bit non scientific? PLease elaborate on the research methodology. Why is this method suitbale for the research questions at hand? This isn't clear form the paper.  PLease elaborate on the discussin of your findings

Kinds regards

Author Response

Reviewer 2

We most sincerely appreciate reviewer 2 for the very insightful observations to improve our study. We accept your input with utmost pleasure.

We have added a research question between line 98-99 We have added more details on the software and methodology as a whole. You may see this across the revised methods We have also improved the discussion section

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have tried to address an interesting problem. However, the methods fall short of the level of a journal paper. I suggest major revision of the paper to address the following concerns:

The meteorological information for the different cities of interest have to be clearly stated. Also the days in which the information was collected and the average clear-sky days in each of the areas.   Sample size of 200 is very low for any proper analysis. Authors have to collect more information.   Daily variation of the solar energy usage has to be clearly addressed.   Information on the kinds of solar panels used and their efficiency is important. 

Author Response

Reviewer 2

We most sincerely appreciate reviewer 3 for the very insightful observations to improve our study. We accept your input with utmost pleasure. Our responses are as follows:

We have tried to capture old and recent meteorological/solar conditions of the study area nd this is given in lines 157-163 We have addressed the sampling issue with referenced to established sampling trends in energy research please see line 188. As per the information on the efficiency of solar panels, we have added this among the study’s future research

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewed the revised version of the manuscript "Not There Yet: Mapping inhibitions to solar energy utilisation by households in African informal urban neighbourhoods", Manuscript ID: sustainability-644704 that has been submitted for publication in the Sustainability MDPI Journal and I can state that the authors have significantly improved the manuscript in contrast to the prior submission.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1

We sincerely appreciate your understanding for the reviews conducted and once more for the vital time that you spent and also the good suggestions that you made.

Best regards 

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have improved the manuscript. A check of language is required before the paper can be accepted.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3

Many thanks once again for reading our paper and appreciating the amendments done.  We thank you for raising language issues. We revised the language through additional hands and spotted many issues which we have fixed,

Best regards