The Red Lake School District is determined to fully harness the power of the sun. With the help of $500,000 through the Minnesota Department of Commerce, this school district serving Minnesota’s Red Lake Indian Reservation is completing its third solar array this summer.

“We thought, as a school district and as a large employer in our community, it really would be a good way to show leadership and to provide opportunities for the community and students to learn about cutting-edge green technology, potential, and job opportunities. ” said superintendent Tim Lutz.

To expand their solar infrastructure, the school district worked with Solar Bear, owned by Red Lake tribal member Bob Blake. The Red Lake Nation of Chippewa has also undertaken an ambitious solar initiative. It recently built an 80-kilowatt project on Red Lake’s Government Center and a 240-kilowatt project at Redby’s workforce development center, known as Oshkiimaajitahdah or New Beginnings.

“The values of the Red Lake Ojibwe people definitely are aligned with equitable clean energy opportunities that will protect the land and the water and the air for generations to come,” Lutz said. “We wanted to be part of that leadership opportunity, that educational opportunity and the opportunity to provide clean energy to our students, our school district buildings, and to the community.”

Each of the district’s arrays are just under 40 kilowatts, the upper limit for net metering compensation from rural electric cooperatives in Minnesota. Under net metering, a utility pays the solar owner for any power fed into the grid by a solar array and used by the owner’s neighbors.

Above that 40-kilowatt limit, rural electric cooperatives can charge additional fees that de-incentivize consumer power generation. Because of this setup, it didn’t make financial sense for Red Lake School District to build arrays that would cover its full power usage, officials said.

Kids, however, can benefit from learning how solar power works. A dashboard on the school’s website tracks energy savings at the moment and over time. At Red Lake Secondary School, the array has saved more than 23 tons of coal, reduced carbon dioxide by more than 58 tons and provided the equivalent of planting 11,645 trees since it was commissioned in September of 2024, with similar savings seen at Ponemah Elementary School.

“Our goal is not only to teach students about cutting-edge green energy but to encourage students to explore career opportunities,” Lutz said. “Our students are from traditionally underserved ethnic and racial populations here in Red Lake, and we believe that they should be given every opportunity to receive the benefits of clean energy, whether that means keeping our environment clean and protecting our young and our elderly from air pollution, and also to provide our students with exposure to opportunities and career pathways.”

Red Lake School District still hopes to receive a 30 percent federal tax reimbursement for the project, though they’re not holding their breath for the reimbursement in the midst of federal clean energy funding cuts. “We’re blending or braiding our funding sources to make the most of them,” Lutz said.

Two other Commerce grants have helped fund HVAC upgrades and electric school buses, through the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program. As a result of these projects, the Red Lake school district has been asked to keynote a summit with the Minnesota Department of Commerce and work a booth at the Minnesota State Fair.

The school district has an e-bike sharing program for staff who want to commute and has taken on multiple facilities projects to reduce energy usage. School district business manager Willie Larson said the school has been replacing incandescent tube lights with LEDs and has installed better flooring, boilers and a spray foam roof at Ponemah Elementary to reduce energy usage.

“We noticed the cost to heat dropped the first year, just by doing that,” Larson said. “We’re trying to find ways to be as green as we can and show the students and the communities that we are there, supporting their heritage and their beliefs and the community in general.”

The buildings have a ventilation circulation system that replaces all the air in the building with outside air during the night when that air can help cool the buildings. “That’s made a big difference, because we don’t have air conditioning everywhere,” said facilities manager Chris Borg.

Borg says kids sometimes ask him about the solar panels: “‘What are those big black things in the back? What do they do? Why are they there?’”

Borg is proud of their curiosity. “They want to understand, and I think there’s just some huge benefits with that,” he said. “They’re developing paradigms about the way things are, right?”

“We’re proud to be a school that has electric buses, and solar panels, and electric car chargers, and electric bikes, and a good HVAC system,” Lutz said. “All these things are coming together to create a bigger impact of reducing our carbon footprint, creating a healthier facility for our students and employees, and leading the way by teaching kids about future options.”