For businesses, easy energy solutions pay off

Minnesota mall goes solar

By Tim Krohn, Mankato Free Press

MANKATO, MINN. — The sun is back, even though the roof is still on.

Before the downtown Mankato Place was enclosed as a mall during urban renewal in the 1970s, the sun shined down on the store fronts.

Now the largest solar collection system in southern Minnesota has been installed on Mankato Place.

Besides the more traditional solar panels that provide electricity, several of the offices and the commons area have new high-tech sky lights that provide enough light to often eliminate the need for other lighting.

“As our electric bills continue to climb, it just makes sense,” said Gordon Awsumb of Awsumb & Associates, who redeveloped the 18,000-square-foot mall as it went from a retail mall to office and entertainment center.

The skylights, 4 feet across, have an automated, mirrored reflector system that tracks the sun through out the day to capture the most sunlight and reflect light down to offices. The panels have a small solar-powered motor that move the panels.

“On sunny days, it produces all the light you need for office spaces,” Awsumb said.

If it is cloudy, or as the sun is low in the sky, the system automatically turns on electric lights in the office as needed to provide steady illumination. Ciralight, the company that makes the sky lights, said they eliminate 80 per cent of the electricity need for lighting in commercial buildings.

The skylights were installed in the commons areas of the mall as well as the new regional offices of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the public defender’s office, Sen. Norm Coleman’s local office, the Minnesota Workforce Center and the Minnesota Corrections Department office.

Awsumb also had installed solar collection panels on the roof and above the awnings of Buffalo Wild Wings that will generate electricity.

The solar panels will produce 6 per cent of all the electrical needs of the mall. In the summer, when the panels are producing the most, excess electricity will be sent out to the grid. “In the summer, the meter will be running backwards,” Awsumb said.

Al Christensen, a salesman with Innovative Power Systems, which installed the solar collector system, said most Minnesotans mistakenly believe the power of the sun is not productive here.

“Southern Minnesota has just as much solar power as parts of Texas and Florida. That surprises people,” Christensen said.

His company has been around 17 years and installed 300 systems.

“Initially, the homeowners were the driving market. Now businesses are seeing the benefits.” Part of the attraction is a 30 percent tax credit small businesses can claim for installing the alternative energy systems.

Awsumb said the combined system will provide a 23 percent savings in electricity costs. He said the payback period for the skylights will be six to seven years. “It’s a 17 percent annual return. Any business would like a return like that.”

Awsumb said the solar- collection panel will have a longer payback of about 15 years, depending on how fast electric costs increase.

Awsumb thinks the system isn’t just good business, but good for the environment and the future.

“From a national policy standpoint, we’re not building new power plants.

So the cost is going to keep going up. If every commercial building had 23 percent of its power gained like this, we wouldn’t need more coal-burning plants.”

Awsumb said he’d been thinking about the conversion for years and settled on the system after he built a solar townhome project in Minneapolis. “ The townhome project was successful and interesting, but I wanted to apply it to a large-scale commercial project.”