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BEMIDJI — The Bemidji Planning Board recently provided an update on its city solar array program, which broke ground in March.
Bemidji Planning Director Jamin Carlson said that 95% of the construction has been finished, outside of some touch-ups.
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The five city locations where the solar arrays have been installed include the city’s Water Treatment Facility, Sanford Center, Fire Station 2, Neilson Reise Arena and City Park Warming House.
The water treatment plant was the first building to get a solar array, with panels installed on the roof of the facility early this spring.
The main focus now is the fencing around each area where the solar arrays were built on ground level. Carlson noted that a transformer for the solar arrays built by the warming house is on back order, but that is the only part left to be installed throughout the five different locations.
Each solar panel array will have anywhere from 29,000 to 49,000 kilowatts of solar power capacity.
Carlson also noted that in the future, he would like to see a way for local community members to see how much power each location is producing. He added he would like to see something like the dashboard that was created by Otter Tail Power for the solar array on the north side of the Bemidji State University campus.
Part of BSU’s agreement with Otter Tail Power, which owns and operates the array on university property, stipulates availability of generation data to support teaching and learning outcomes.
The dashboard, Beaver Solar, is named after the university’s mascot and shows information such as how much solar power is currently being created by the solar arrays, how much is created in a day, one month and over the lifetime of the arrays.
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The city of Bemidji partnered with the state of Minnesota and Otter Tail Power to bring the solar project to fruition. A Minnesota Department of Commerce Solar on Public Buildings Program grant funded 70% of the solar arrays across the five local public facilities.
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