Bemidji Pioneer: High-profile solar power project planned at BSU

January 2, 2018

Plans for a photovoltaic solar installation in the parking lot of BSU’s American Indian Resource Center – a first for Bemidji State – are moving ahead. Here’s an artist’s rendering of the 36.3-kilowatt project, which is envisioned as an overhead, carport-style structure that would meet 20 to 30 percent of the AIRC’s electricity needs and reduce yearly utility bills by an estimated $112,000. (Submitted photo)

BEMIDJI — Bemidji State University leaders plan to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to install solar panels at the school’s American Indian Resource Center.

Staff want to install the $230,000 photovoltaic panels at the resource center’s parking lot — strategically visible from the nearby football stadium and Birchmont Drive — by spring 2019.

“To have it in a place that is so visible, I think it will have significant exposure, to show what we are doing to help reduce our carbon footprint,” Faith Hensrud, BSU’s president, said in a statement to the Pioneer. “We can show the community, we can show our students what it is that we are doing to make a difference.”

BSU administrators estimate the 36-kilowatt panels would supply about a quarter of the resource center’s electricity and shave $112,000 off the university’s utility bills over 30 years. (The school spends about $675,000 per year on electricity.)

University staff plan to ask prospective donors to fund the project as part of their broader annual push for donations. Donors gave the university $2.3 million last fiscal year, most of which went to student scholarships. University spokesperson Scott Faust said he wasn’t sure if the school had applied for any grants for the solar project yet — but the school could apply for a “leverage equipment” grant that would put some state money towards the project. The project could also get about $45,000 in rebates from Otter Tail Power, he added.

Students at the university approved a solar energy referendum last spring, and staff expect them to help design and decorate the concrete columns on which the panels would be built.

To learn more about the planned solar project, contact Jana Wolff at the BSU Alumni and Foundation at (218) 755-2872. The foundation hopes to raise $2.7 million for the university this year.