Dakota Middle School and Longfellow Elementary School are adding solar to help power their schools and to benefit their students and community now and into the future. They are two of 80 schools in 45 school districts across the state that received grants from the Minnesota Department of Commerce Solar for Schools Program (mn.gov/solar4schools) to install solar power.
**The schools will be celebrating their new arrays with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday, November 15 at 10 a.m. at Longfellow Elementary School, this event is open to the public. A brief ceremony will be followed by light refreshments. Roof access will be available to the press for photographs, weather-dependent. Members of the media are invited to this event.**
The solar arrays were installed on the schools' roofs and started producing power Fall of 2023. By year 25 they will have produced over 3 million kilowatt hours of clean energy, which is equal to growing almost 37,000 trees and will avoid the production of almost 5 million pounds of CO2.
Benefits of the Solar for Schools Program
Solar for Schools is designed to provide incentives for the installation of solar energy systems in Minnesota public K-12 schools as well as state colleges and universities. The program offers benefits for schools, students, communities, and the state, including:
Adding solar reduces energy costs, which are the second-highest cost category for our school.
Students will have opportunities for real-time learning about solar power and learn about careers in the growing clean energy economy.
Our local economy benefits from clean energy jobs to install solar and from investments to expand our energy infrastructure.
Solar power helps reduce electricity-based greenhouse gas emissions.
Solar power adds “homegrown” renewable sources of energy to our school and the state’s electrical grid, since Minnesota has to import 100% of all fossil fuels.