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Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience

A community partnership to advance solar energy and community energy resilience

About Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience

Ecolibrium3 served as the co-principal investigator on the City of Duluth’s Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience project. Eco3 conducted community-based participatory research (CBPR) to understand the community impacts of natural disasters. Research included surveys, one-on-one conversations, and focus groups to ensure community needs were prioritized in assessing and planning for grid outages due to natural disasters. Multiple tools and assessments were completed as part of the project.

Resource Library

The following resources were created through the RACER project

Solar Siting Rubric The Solar Siting Rubric is best used to evaluate and rank larger (~40kW+) sites that could be suitable for solar PV and storage development. It is designed to assist owners of municipal and public infrastructure to evaluate projects and understand how solar developments can offset costs. It is recommended that the rubric be used in conjunction with community conversations to understand community factors that may impact project acceptance and implementation.

Duluth, MN Outage Tabletop Exercise- Tabletop exercise scenario, brief, and evaluation. 

Duluth, MN Community-based Organization Tabletop- Tabletop exercise scenarios and briefs. Includes “persona” worksheets that were added to amplify vulnerable populations.

Moorhead, MN Tabletop ExerciseMoorhead, Minnesota tabletop exercise book developed as test of the Resilience Planning Toolkit. Disaster scenario included a tornado that resulted in cascading critical infrastructure failures.

SETO Session Poster- Mid-project poster for Solar Energy Technologies Office review.

Duluth Minimum Resilience Standards- Ten community-based minimum resilience standards that identify most vulnerable populations, negative impacts during power outages, and individual and community-based strategies for building resilience.

City of Duluth Site Assessment & Evaluation for Solar PV & Storage- Solar siting workbook for Duluth sites that includes initial rubric evaluation and revised scores. Demonstrates tool application and results.

Community Resilience Survey Results- Final survey questions and results used to inform selection menu for minimum resilience standards and prioritized actions.

Resilient Power Site Evaluations and DesignSite evaluations and system designs or top five ranked solar sites identified by the CIT using the Solar Siting Rubric and initial site investigations. Sites include a city reservoir cap, two fire halls, community center, customer service/maintenance building.

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The Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan (Duluth CCAP) is a citizen effort to inspire community-wide action to reduce Duluth’s greenhouse gas emissions and envision a future for Duluth that is sustainable and equitable. Learn more about actions you can take by visiting the site below.

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