{"id":56516,"date":"2019-08-12T08:46:45","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T15:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=56516"},"modified":"2019-08-12T08:50:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T15:50:06","slug":"nau-srp-research-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-srp-research-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"Research partnership between NAU, Salt River Project provides solutions to Arizona\u2019s problems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Aug. 12, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\neffect do zero-net homes have on the energy grid? What\u2019s the dollar value of a\nhealthy ecosystem, and what does that look like in the ever-changing Southwest?\nWhat are the best methods to protect forests from catastrophic fires? How does\nall of this affect the average resident of the Phoenix area?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These\nquestions, critical in a time of warming climate and a place like Arizona,\nwhere healthy land, air and water play an important role in our lives, are at\nthe forefront of a research partnership between Northern Arizona University and\nthe Phoenix-based Salt River Project (SRP), one of the nation\u2019s largest public\npower utilities. The SRP funds research focusing on applied research activities\nrelated to SRP\u2019s core businesses of power and water. The majority of the funded\nNAU projects have been related to forest health and watershed management, with\na few focused on power delivery and residential energy load impacts on the\ngrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the partnership begins its third year, directors <strong>Tom Acker<\/strong>, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and <strong>Ben Ruddell<\/strong>, a professor and director of the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, along with SRP leaders, highlighted the importance of the relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe NAU-SRP Cooperative\nAgreement is an important long-term partnership because it brings together the\napplied research priorities of SRP, the needs of SRP&#8217;s customers, the training\nof advanced students and NAU&#8217;s public research university capabilities,\u201d Ruddell\nsaid. \u201cThis is exactly the sort of partnership that public universities were\ncreated to service, with home-grown Arizona expertise and talent serving the\npublic interest of our state&#8217;s citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis research partnership with NAU has proven\nto be invaluable as students and faculty work with our engineers to find\nsolutions to real-world problems that could benefit SRP and our customers,\u201d said Alejandra\nMendez, a senior research engineer at SRP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nNAU-SRP partnership completed three projects this year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>A study of how to integrate zero-net energy homes and electric vehicles (EVs) with the electrical power grid. Too many net-zero homes and EVs in a single neighborhood may create costs and problems for the power grid, but the use of large batteries can mitigate these problems. <strong>Venkata Yaramasu<\/strong> and <strong>Truong Nghiem<\/strong>, assistant professors of electrical engineering in SICCS, along with a team of one master\u2019s student and eight undergraduate students, looked at home battery storage and ways to prepare infrastructure that can handle the increasing number of ZNE homes and lead to more renewable energy generation in the state, including SRP\u2019s service territory.<\/li><li>SICCS assistant professor <strong>Temuulen \u201cTeki\u201d Sankey<\/strong> used drones to measure how thinning the forest led to increased snow accumulation and soil moisture. This can contribute to the ecosystem\u2019s ability to survive drought and can increase the forest\u2019s yield of high-quality water that fills SRP\u2019s reservoir\u2019s downstream. Her work supports one Ph.D. student.<\/li><li>Mixed conifer forests, which cover millions of acres of the western U.S., are critical for healthy ecosystem function and for human life, including clean water, providing timber resources, wildlife habitats and recreational opportunities. Associate professor of forestry <strong>Andrew Sanchez Meador<\/strong> and <strong>David Huffman<\/strong>, director of research and development at the Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) investigated how tree density can best be managed to improve overall forest health and ensure that freshwater continues flowing to SRP\u2019s customers in a potentially warmer and drier future Arizona climate.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text alignwide\" style=\"grid-template-columns:23% auto\"><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"107\" src=\"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wordpresst\/uploads\/sites\/153\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/NAU_primary-281_3514-1-e1536853679171.png\" alt=\"NAU logo\" class=\"wp-image-52199\"\/><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<p><br>Heidi Toth | NAU Communications<br>(928) 523-8737 | <a href=\"mailto:heidi.toth@nau.edu\ufeff\">heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-srp-research-partnership\/\">Aug. 12, 2019 What effect do zero-net homes have on the energy grid? What\u2019s the dollar value of a healthy ecosystem, and what does that look like in the ever-changing Southwest? What are the best methods to protect forests from catastrophic fires? How does all of this affect the average resident of the Phoenix area?&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":56518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}