City explores options for community-owned energy garden

Luverne may soon be home to a community solar garden.
The city of Luverne has budgeted $100,000 in 2017 to pursue plans for a possible city-owned solar garden.
“We are still very much in the preliminary stages,” said Luverne City Administrator John Call.
“We don’t really have a timeline yet and no site has been selected,” he added.
A community solar garden is a collection of solar panels built and maintained at a location with good solar exposure by a sponsoring agency, in this case the city of Luverne.
Residents are able to invest in the project by purchasing the output from one or more solar panels.
By investing in the project, residents could receive a federal tax credit as well as a credit to their monthly utility bill.
“People may be interested in using more green energy, but adding solar panels at home is complicated and not practical in many cases,” Call said.
By building a local solar garden, Call pointed out the city would be offering residents the opportunity to “be green” and save money in an easier way.
In addition to residents, Call said local businesses and industries may also find it beneficial to invest in the project.
The possible solar garden would be built to produce up to 20kw of energy and would be modeled after a municipal solar garden in Moorhead.
Call said that is relatively small compared to private industrial-sized solar projects seen other places.
Estimated costs budgeted for engineering, design and construction of the project were based on the costs of the Moorhead project.
According to Call, the next step in the project is to obtain more technical advice from Missouri River Energy Services, which Luverne is a member of.
“They are experts in the energy field and know how solar gardens work,” he said.
Local businesses and residents will then likely be surveyed to gauge interest in the project before it moves forward.
“We’re still studying and investigating at this point,” Call said.