A solar panel project at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth was completed and interconnected to Xcel’s grid on March 9, 2026. This system consists of 330, 415W DC panels (136.95 kWp) and two 50kWAC 3 phase SolarEdge inverters. The system is projected to supply 76% of the church building’s annual electrical load and is […]
Plymouth Church Rooftop Solar Project Read More »
The National Solar Tour is October 3 – 5 and we will be hosting in-person visits as part of the Minnesota Sustainability Tour. With installation of our Mitsubishi Hiper-Heat cold climate air source heat pump (ccASHP) in January 2024, we are essentially fully electified for all home energy uses. What this means is we no
Our Electrified Home Read More »
Key Takeaways We recently completed a 2160 mile round trip to Fort Collins, Idaho Springs and Frisco Colorado in our 2025 Polestar 3. With many thousands of miles of Tesla roadtripping under our belts, this non-Tesla road trip was as easy as, and way more comfortable than many of the Tesla ones. The very first
Polestar 3 First Road Trip Read More »
On June 24 I joined a group of Climate Reality – Central Minnesota Chapter members on a tour of the Xcel Energy Sherco Solar Project. When completed, Sherco 1, 2 and 3 will form one of the largest solar power plants in the United States at 710MWac nameplate generation capacity covering 4680 acres (7.3 sq
Sherco solar plant tour Read More »
On Sunday, April 27 the MOPLY community will celebrate Earth Day with a Vegan/Vegetarian Lunch, Eco Fair, and Electric Vehicle car show. Details are at https://www.moply.org/solar-at-mo. The headline news is that the church is having a large solar panel system installed on the roof. This system will have a 123 kW nameplate capacity and will
Earth Day Celebration at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth Read More »
This is one of those nerdy topics that doesn’t matter, and yet, can be a source of ongoing debate. At least, I intend to make it so, even if I am screaming into the void. This is going to be a bit of a ramble, but hopefully you will find your self entertained and maybe
No, Virginia, There is (Technically) No Level 3 Read More »
I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to the Brooklyn Park Rotary club on April 15. Given the time that has passed since I last presented, I updated some of the slides that had several year old data with up-to-date information. These include counts of DC fast charger locations and dispensers, and manufacturer and
Electric Vehicle talk for Brooklyn Center Rotary Club Read More »
I am on several Sierra Club North Star chapter mailing lists and recently got an invite to a Degrowth Team meeting. The meeting invite included a link to an article for shared reading by Christopher Marquis, published on the Harvard Business Review and titled, In Defense of Degrowth. I saved a copy of the article
In (Real) Defense of Degrowth Read More »
I was recently contacted by Martin, a school volunteer at an extracurricular science program. Martin related that a student in the program had come across an earlier blog post I had written, as well as an informative article on electric school buses, and wondered if I would be willing to put a link to that
Electric school buses are a triple win Read More »
