Product Evaluation Hub

Background

With few rigorous product evaluations to inform purchasing decisions, large commercial and institutional customers face enormous uncertainty and high costs associated with purchasing advanced energy efficiency, renewable distributed energy generation and energy storage products (collectively defined as distributed energy resource (DER) products). Existing third-party resources do not typically provide information on specific products, nor do they allow for side-by-side comparisons of similar products or provide all of the information consumers need to make informed buying decisions. Relying on manufacturers’ studies is also problematic given the potential biases in such studies. There is little incentive for market actors to fill this gap, which hinders the diffusion of promising DER products on a large scale.

Goals

The Energy and Efficiency Institute at the University of California, Davis has developed the Empower Procurement Product Evaluation Hub to:

  • Evaluate selected DER products in a rigorous and transparent manner, and
  • Disseminate widely evaluation results to large commercial and institutional customers that use a formal procurement process.

The evaluations enable ‘apples-to-apples’ comparisons of similar products, as well as comparisons to existing government and industry standards. Testing is conducted at respected and experienced institutions with comprehensive test facilities including UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Energy Solutions. The evaluations, and the supporting data, are available through this public web platform.

Providing detailed, comprehensive, and generalizable information in a format that facilitates comparisons, provides buyers with valuable information on which to base their procurement decisions. By providing large customers with the tools they need to make informed purchasing decisions, the Hub will stimulate more widespread adoption of proven energy efficiency and energy storage products, reducing California’s overall energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

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