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Little Falls board approves moving forward with solar grant application
Summary
The Little Falls Community Schools board voted to let staff pursue a Department of Commerce solar grant and to continue negotiations with Ideal Energies on a proposed 275 kW ground-mounted array that the company would finance and install.
The Little Falls Community Schools Board of Education on Aug. 19 approved a motion to allow district staff to submit a full Department of Commerce grant application and continue project steps for a proposed solar array at the high school.
Rich Dragetz of Ideal Energies told the board the company would finance, install and operate a 275-kilowatt ground-mounted system on district property behind the high-school garages and provide educational materials tied to state standards. Dragetz said the system would produce an estimated $49,913 in energy savings in year one based on the district’s Minnesota Power rate plan. He said the company would pay rent/revenue to the district, and the district’s first-year obligation under the proposed contract would be about $13,004.73 (presented as an annual figure, payable monthly or in other intervals). Dragetz presented a modeled net first-year savings of about $35,009.40 and presented longer-term estimates of roughly $958,700 in savings over 20 years and about $1.884 million over 30 years; he described those figures as project estimates tied to current rate and production assumptions.
Board members asked about curriculum and operations. Dragetz said the grant requires an educational component and that Ideal Energies supplies curriculum and a monitoring platform for classroom use. He said the company performs operations and maintenance during the initial 20-year period; inverter replacement and other modeled maintenance costs are included in the cash-flow examples provided to the board. Dragetz also described panel warranties (30-year panel warranty, expected degradation rates) and said the system would connect behind the meter at the high school so the school benefits first from the energy produced. He said Minnesota Power’s annual banking provision would allow the district to receive retail credit for summer generation used later in the year.
The board approved allowing staff to move forward with the full grant application and readiness steps; final approval of any contract would return to the board after the grant-readiness and final-application stages. The motion to permit submission of the full grant application carried by voice vote.
