RACER Update
The City of Duluth, along with local stakeholders, completed a two-year planning and analysis project through the Department of Energy’s Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience (RACER) grant program. The project included development of planning tools, analysis of potential solar and storage sites, and community-based research to determine what actions should be prioritized for building resilience to grid outages and natural disasters.
In addition to the City of Duluth’s RACER Final Technical Report available at OSTI.gov , project results and toolkits include:
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 Exercise– Moorhead, Minnesota tabletop exercise book developed as a test of the Resilience Planning Toolkit. Their 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 included initial rubric evaluation and revised scores. Demonstrates tool application and results.
Community Resilience Survey Results- Final survey questions and results were used to inform the selection of minimum resilience standards and prioritized actions.
Resilient Power Site Evaluations and Design– Site evaluations and system designs of the top five ranked solar sites identified by the Critical Infrastructure Team, using the Solar Siting Rubric and initial site investigations. Sites include a city reservoir cap, two fire halls, community center, and customer service/maintenance building.
