The Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES), a non-profit that promotes solar energy in Minnesota through education and the demonstration of practical application, has been conducting the Minnesota Solar Tour for about 14 years via volunteers or staff located in the Twin Cities area. The goal of the tour is to increase people’s confidence that they can make improvements to their own homes or businesses by giving them a “hands on” experience with working products and a friendly interaction with someone who is an owner and user, rather than a sales person.
MRES has found the Greater Minnesota portion of the tour to be consistently lagging behind in media attention and attendance. Hoping to rectify that, the strategy for 2014 was twofold: First, to separate the Twin Cities Metro Solar Tour from the Greater Minnesota Solar Tour, and second, to hire local organizers. Separating the tours helped to focus more time and attention on expanding educational efforts statewide.
MRES was awarded Seed Grants from the Central and Southeast CERT Regions to help hire people who lived and worked in those areas. “These people had more connections to the solar and wind businesses, the renewable energy homeowners, the media in the area, and the community groups than the volunteers and staff living in the Twin Cities ever could,” said Laura Burrington, the Managing Director for MRES during the 2014 tour.
“Originally we had planned on having the tours on the same day in the end of May,” said Burrington. “In March we really started to feel like, once again, the Twin Cities work was overtaking the attention we wanted to give Greater Minnesota. At that point we decided to move the Greater Minnesota Solar Tour back to the National Solar Tour date of October 4th. This gave our regional people more time to organize a stronger event.”
And it worked! Over 300 people participated in the Greater Minnesota Solar Tour making roughly 600 visits (seeing on average two sites). Statewide there were 19 articles or TV reports generated by the tour, and you can see the media attention on this map.
Want to learn how your community can get a CERTs Seed Grant to advance your work? Applications for the next round of grants are available and due October 26th. To get started, visit the Seed Grant page and see other awarded projects from past years.
Attend the Solar Tour October 3rd, 2015
The Minnesota Solar Tour for 2015 has once again been combined into a single event, which is just around the corner on October 3rd, 2015 from 10am-3pm at locations all across the state!
- See locations: They already have several sites lined up but we are looking for more. Click here to see who is on deck for 2015.
- Be on the tour: If you have installed solar, wind, biomass, electric car charging, or sustainable living features, contact Chris Meyer at chrism@mnrenewables.org.
