City of Halstad

City of Halstad invests in community housing and energy savings

June 2025

By Joel Haskard

Readers of the Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) Energy Stories Newsletter may remember our feature on the city of Halstad, population of 564, from a couple years back. To refresh your memory, the northwestern Minnesota town harnessed CERTs Seed Grants to help install the first public electric vehicle (EV) charger in Norman County, as well as adding cozy insulation to homes in a public housing complex.

Looking for the scoop on their recent seed grant projects, we’re catching up with Lucas Spaeth, superintendent of Halstad Municipal Utilities.

Investing in the community

Wimmer Homes, owned and operated by the City of Halstad, were originally built in the 1960s for low-income elderly people to preserve independent living. Each home in the small, rental housing complex was designed with electric heat. Yet over the years some of the units grew drafty and uncomfortable due to old, ineffective insulation.

Spaeth and Halstad Municipal Utilities personnel tackled this issue with the help of a 2022 CERTs Seed Grant. The grant enabled the city to insulate the attics in each of the 14 Wimmer rental units.

But they weren’t done yet...

Now with the help of a 2024 CERTs Seed Grant, Halstad Municipal Utilities put a mini-split air source heat pump into the Wimmer Home laundry building. It’s part of an effort to pilot an off-peak rate and also reduce energy costs with the high energy efficiency of the unit coupled with a Steffes brick heater. An off-peak electric rate means a lower price during times of low demand, like at night. The brick heaters, commonly known as Electric Thermal Storage, then convert the electricity into heat during those cheap off-peak (and cold!) nighttime hours.

“The concept is there for retrofitting,” notes Spaeth. “Take out the old baseboard heat and put in that new efficient cooling and heating.”

“As a small community, Halstad works to make its residents comfortable. Affordability of heating your homes is a necessity to all our local residents,” says Spaeth. “Our belief is that offering an off-peak heating option will mutually benefit the renter, owner, and the larger electric system.”

“As a small community, Halstad works to make its residents comfortable. Affordability of heating your homes is a necessity to all our local residents. Our belief is that offering an off-peak heating option will mutually benefit the renter, owner, and the larger electric system.”

— Lucas Spaeth, Halstad Municipal Utilities superintendent

Continuing to innovate

“I love working with Halstad,” says Northwest CERT Coordinator Anna Peterson. “They are a great example of a small municipal utility innovating to help improve their community.”

It’s true! In addition to utilizing peak rate timeslots, the city is fine tuning the system and trying to track their progress.

“After a warm recent winter, we are still looking at the data,” says Spaeth. “We remodeled one housing unit, too, and we expect that to create cost savings going forward.”

Halstad hopes to continue to improve the Wimmer Homes and make them more efficient, comfortable, and safe.

“They are kind of cool little buildings,” shares Spaeth. “We figure let’s put some investment in them and improve on what we have been doing. Even if you have to rip out a bunch of wiring, they’re only 800 square feet or so, and it doesn’t seem too daunting.”

Project specs

Data is still being compiled from this pilot project. Installation included a cold climate air source heat pump in the laundry unit of the Wimmer Homes that added a high efficiency cold climate mini split with storage heat. The technologies included a Gree Low Temp Mini-Split Heat Pump 18,000 BTU installed by Grove Mechanical, alongside electrical upgrades and installing Steffes 4’ brick heater BTU from Jacobson Electric. Additional remodeling was provided by Halstad Municipal Utilities.

July 2023

Small Town, Small Homes, Big Savings + EVs!

January 2024

2024 CERTs Seed Grants awarded to 45 community-based clean energy projects

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