AMI Data Analyst Intern (City of Palo Alto)

City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) is a dynamic organization serving the progressive community of Palo Alto with electricity, natural gas and water utility service. CPAU is focused on providing reliable, low cost and sustainable utility services for the community, and strives to meet the community’s climate goals. CPAU is seeking a summer intern to analyze electricity consumption information measured by the newly installed advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters to aid utility and customer decision-making. 

Palo Alto is in the final stages of installing advanced meters in the community and expects to have most of the 29,000 electric meters installed by the summer of 2025. Since the meters were installed over a 2-year period a full year of AMI data is not available on all meters. The focus of this analysis will be the 25,000 residential meters, of which 15,000 are single-family residential (SFR) homes and 10,000 are multi-family (MFR) homes. AMI data include energy usage in kWh on a 15-minute basis and voltage in Volts on a 15-minute basis. The intern would assist in analyzing the data collected by the AMI advanced electric meters and stored in the meter data management system (MDMS) Compass database.

This internship would be for an 8 to 10-week period, with flexible start and end dates. CPAU has an 80 hours/2-week pay period, with a 9/80 schedule that provides time-off every other Friday. City prefers to intern to be in the office 2-3 days a week, but fully remote candidates would also be considered. 

Examples of Duties:

The AMI Data Analyst summer intern would lead and assist with the following tasks: 

1. Developing 24 hours x 12 month load profiles of SFR customers with different electrical load characteristics (homes with Solar PV, BESS and EV charging system, homes with electric water and space heating systems, homes without electrification appliances, square footage of homes). This information could be used to better understand customer and appliance- load profiles, and for electric rate making purposes.
2. Using the meter-to-transformer mapping, estimate distribution transformer loading, and compare it with the results from the current estimation methodology for transformer loading using monthly billing information. Evaluate impact of distributed energy resources and flexible technologies on distribution transformer loading. 
3. Lead in the development of a residential electric rate comparison calculator in Microsoft Excel to enable residential customers to utilize their hourly AMI data to compare their monthly/annual utility bill under their current Residential E1 Rate and under the planned Time-of-use (TOU) rate. 
4. Time permitting, review voltage profiles:
   1. Assess end-of-feeder voltage levels and compare them with voltages at the beginning of the feeder, and assess the voltage drop across all 65 feeders; compare it with our modelled results to improve model accuracy.
   2. Assess voltage signature of all meters connected to a single transformer, to confirm the meter to transformer mapping is accurate – if not, update the mapping.

Knowledge of:

• Microsoft Office Suite, Excel proficiency and basic modeling skills preferred.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Office equipment and systems such as phones, copiers, scanners, and email.

Ability to:

• Communicate in clear, concise, and professional ways, both orally and in writing. 
• Understand and present data analytics. 
• Use Power BI, Tableau, Python programming preferred. 

Qualifications:

Academic status at an accredited college or university taking courses as a full-time student with a concentration in Data Analytics, Engineering, Economics, Data Science, or a similar related field leading to a Master's degree in a field related to the work which is performed.