Over 80 people were enlightened at a solar workshop in St. Cloud this past Wednesday. Central, Metro, and West Central Clean Energy Resource Team (CERT) Regions converged at the Riverside Park Pavilion to host a tri-region resource event that provided a plethora of information about solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. All of the presentations and photos from the event can be found at the bottom of this post.
Getting Started: The event started with a brief introduction by CERT Regional Coordinators Diana McKeown (Metro), Jeff Vetsch (West Central) and Angela Headlee (Central), but there was no dilly-dallying around, so we jumped right into a fantastic presentation by our keynote speaker, Eric Buchanan with the West Central Research and Outreach Center at the University of Minnesota. Mr. Buchanan provided very thorough information about solar technologies and valuable statistical material about energy usage now and into the future. It was definitely eye opening, and good to get everyone thinking about solar!
Solar Owners: A Solar Owner Panel directly followed the keynote speaker. The panel consisted of Karen Wilson (Crosby, MN), Jim Knoblach (St. Cloud, MN), and Zev Kujolic (Sleepy Eye, MN). Karen has employed several renewable energy technologies at her home in Crosby including geothermal and solar photovoltaic. Jim spoke extensively about his photovoltaic system at his residence as well. Zev, a representative of tenKsolar, presented information about a larger system that was installed at the farm of Curt Trost. All panel participants talked positively about their personal systems. The only negative thing that came out of the conversation was that Karen jokingly wishes they had waited to install their PV system, as Minnesota Power just launched a fabulous rebate program for residents and businesses.
Solar Manufacturers: The workshop concluded with a ‘Minnesota Made’ panel of industry experts. The panel included Tim Hebrink with 3M, Gary Shaver with Silicon Energy, Jim Losleben with tenKsolar, Jason Edens with RREAL, and Scott Randall with Solar Skies. The panel provided valuable information about different types of solar technologies including thin film, 
traditional solar PV panels, horizontally-mounted PV panels, vertically-mounted solar thermal air heat collectors, solar thermal hot water systems, and much more that can’t be listed in a single blog post!
And a fun story: This event not only brought people from all over Central Minnesota, but it also drew one person in particular from Duluth, MN. What is unusual about this person from Duluth is that he has been on our CERTs list for about 3 years even though he lived in Michigan! He thought the information & resources that CERTs provided were so great and he also thought if we could do it in Minnesota that maybe at some point they could do it in Michigan. He shared our resources with others in his community. It turns out he relocated a few months ago to Duluth, MN and he was REALLY happy to be able to attend this CERTs event.
Solar Works in Central Minnesota was an all-around success! Thank you to all of our speakers, experts, and panel participants as well as the magnificent attendees!
Here are all of the presentations from the day, for your downloading pleasure:
- Introductory Presentations:
- CERTs – Solar Works in St. Cloud
- Eric Buchanan, WCROC – Solar Energy Basics
- Solar Manufacturers:
- Tim Hebrink – 3M solar technologies
- Gary Shaver – Silicon Energy solar PV
- Jim Losleben – tenKsolar solar PV
- Jason Edens – RREAL solar furnace
- Scott Randall – Solar Skies solar hot water
Check out photos from the event below or here on Flickr.
Looking for more resources? This event was part of the new Rural Minnesota Solar Initiative, a resource from CERTs to help farmers and small business owners learn more about how solar can work for them, and provide the needed assistance to catalyze projects. You can learn more about solar and see our freshest resources at http://solar.mncerts.org.
