Tierra works with clients to provide highly effective and cost-efficient turnkey solutions for field research involving onsite customer visits. Our turnkey approach includes project scoping, recruitment and training of local field resources, development of data collection tools and systems, instrumentation, site recruitment, management of field activities, and data QC and delivery. Tierra’s systems and experience consistently result in projects that are completed on time and at budget.
The Tierra business model combines experienced management with highly developed business systems and processes to develop local capacity to complete field research for distributed energy resource evaluations. By concentrating our efforts within the community, Tierra facilitates reduced administrative and logistical expenditures, and improved community economic prosperity.
Most recently, the Tierra team collaborated with Arizona Public Service (APS) to conduct a Residential Load Disaggregation Research Study (RLRS). The project explores energy usage patterns of larger residential appliances by installing a real-time energy usage meter (eGuage) within the electric panel and installing Wi-Fi capability to transmit usage data to a secure server in 15-second intervals. This study will serve to further assist APS in delivering energy efficiency programs that help residents use energy wisely while helping APS define new load management strategies. Energy usage meters will be installed by Tierra in 150 homes in the span of three months. By partnering with local, qualified, and experienced energy inspectors and electricians, Tierra team members have been able to successfully deploy eGauge meters within participant homes while minimizing costs and ensuring participant satisfaction. Figure 21 provides an overview of the data captured by the deployed eGauge meters, including point-in-time and historic usage with the ability to view and analyze data at the site level and 15 separate appliances.
Figure 21: eGauge Meter Data Dashboard
Distributed Flexible Capacity Market Potential Study for Arizona Public Service
The Tierra team has partnered with Guidehouse Consulting on a project for Arizona Public Service to assess the technical and market potential for distributed flexible DER capacity in order to help APS prepare a strategy on the most appropriate DSM/DER portfolio and...
Duke Energy Winter Peak Targeted DSM Plan
Tierra staff are engaged on a major initiative for Duke Energy to prepare a targeted DSM plan to address winter peak load. The five core objectives of the project include Define peak winter needs that can be used to develop a targeted technical/program solution set....