Minnesota's PV market heats up

Share

But this winter, the North Star State’s climate for solar appears to be heating up.

On Tuesday, engineering and construction company Mortenson and community solar specialist SunShare announced an agreement to develop and build an undisclosed volume of solar projects in utility Xcel Energy’s service territory in Minnesota.

SolarShare will develop, finance and own the projects. Power generated will be sold to customers of Xcel as part of a community solar program.

"Minnesota's community solar program dramatically expands the ability for companies, governmental entities and residents to utilize solar," stated Trent Mostaert, vice president and general manager at Mortenson. "This is a great partnership and an opportunity for Mortenson to work with SunShare, a leading community solar company, and bring our significant solar experience home to Minnesota."

The announcement comes a week after the utility said it planned to more than double its renewable energy by 2030. As part of that, Xcel also said it planned to expand its solar portfolio to 2.4 GW from 14 MW.

Also on Tuesday, St. Paul-based Ecolab Inc. announced that the company would power all of its operations in the state with solar through a deal with SunEdison.

A representative for the California-based company said the 16 MW agreement with Ecolab is just the first stage of its plan to supply 200 MW at up to 20 sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

The Ecolab deal will see SunEdison develop "community solar garden" projects. This type of installation allows for an array's output and ownership to be shared amongst individuals or companies.

Popular content

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.