​For two days this month, we brought three electrical students from the Leech Lake Tribal College to two sites in northern Cass County to get some training and hands on experience with solar. The students: Alex, Lindsay, and Emmanuel along with their instructor, Lucas Whiting, spent half a day at RREAL's headquaters near Backus and a day and a half at the Hackensack Community Garden (HCG).

At RREAL's headquarters, Wolf Track Energy's CEO Jesse Fette and electrician Anthony Fair (a former LLTC student) led the students through the steps of diagnosing our older solar array that has visibly damaged panels. They walked the students through the steps of safely shutting off the array and then determining whether the visibly damaged panels were working and the steps to remove bad panels from the circuit. A big thanks to Wolf Track Energy for sharing their knowledge!

We spent the rest of that day at the Hackensack Community Garden where we have a project with the HCG's lead gardener, Jim Etzel, to change from a generator-powered well pump to one powered by solar. That first afternoon, we set the main post for the array, mixed concrete, backfilled dirt, and buried conduit from the array to the well head. We returned the following Friday to install the solar panels and electrical connections. It was a collaborative effort and everyone learned a lot (including that it is best to select your panels and measure them before ordering the cross beam!)

This hands-on experience was made possible through two different grants through the Initiative Foundation and logistics support through the Wilson Foundation.