Minnesota Solar for Schools, explained by someone who read the whole RFP

The state will pay 70 to 90 percent of a school solar project. Selection is a score, not a race — and most of the points districts lose are free ones. Here is how it actually works.

Round 2 readiness window: August 3 to September 4, 2026
70–90%
of purchase and installation cost

Set by your district's need band and system size — $1.26 to $2.70 per watt. Capped cumulatively per district at $675,000 in Xcel territory, $500,000 elsewhere.

96
points, scored — not first-come

Submitting on day one scores exactly the same as day thirty. Step 2, the full application due January 4, 2027, is the part that rewards being early.

~60
of those points cost nothing

They are decisions about sequencing, one free phone call, and one document. Districts leave them on the table because nobody told them the rubric existed.

Start here: score your own district in about four minutes

Eight criteria, straight from the RFP's evaluation rubric. Nothing you enter leaves your browser — there is no server behind it and no form to fill in.

Readiness Score Estimator

Answer eight questions, see your score out of 96, and see exactly which free points you are currently giving away. Then move the system size and installed cost sliders and watch the grant change — the rate steps down as systems get bigger, which surprises nearly everyone.

Score my district

Application Walkthrough

Every document Commerce asks for, with dates, a live checklist, and who on your staff has to produce each one. It deliberately shows the full workload up front rather than after you have committed.

See what's involved

The two things worth doing this week

Neither one commits you to anything. A Project ID is an identifier and a consultation is a conversation. Both take days to arrange and both are prerequisites, which is why they belong at the front of a five-week window.

The clock

MilestoneDateDays away

Dates for the 2026 Round 2 window are as published by the Department of Commerce. Confirm against the RFP when it posts on August 3, 2026 — the Department has amended published pages in place before.

Four things we say out loud, because you will find them anyway

Questions we get asked first

Does applying for several buildings improve our odds?
It does the opposite on the rubric. One application scores 24 points on the first criterion; four or more scores 6. Filing for several buildings at once costs you 18 points on your best project. There may be a way to put multiple systems into one application instead — we are confirming exactly how Commerce treats that before recommending it either way.
Do we need a board resolution before September 4?
No. A readiness assessment needs a signature from an authorised representative — a superintendent or business manager. The signed-letter requirement people point at applies only to a petition to exceed the grant cap. Do not let a board meeting date become the reason you miss the window.
Has our district already used up the cap?
The cap is cumulative across every Solar for Schools grant the district has ever received, so it is worth checking. Separately, the rubric awards 12 points to districts that have never received one and zero to prior grantees — which means a district that has never done this is, counterintuitively, in the stronger position.
How much will our district actually get?
The grant is the lowest of three limits: a dollars-per-watt rate, a percentage of project cost, and your remaining cap. Which one binds depends on your need band, your system size and your real installed cost — and a system sized 120 percent above your metered consumption is not allowed at any price. The estimator will show you the shape of it. A number we would put in writing needs your actual electricity bill, and we will not guess at one.
Can you just submit the application for us?
No, and nobody can. Step 1 is submitted by the school through the state's grant portal under the district's own name, and the grantee is always the school in every financing structure. We can assemble every piece of it; you press submit. Anyone telling you otherwise has not read the program's own answers.
What does this cost the district?
That depends on the structure, and the honest answer is that the cash-timing question — how grant money reaches a project the district does not pay for up front — is one we have asked Commerce in writing and have not yet had answered. We will send you their answer when it arrives. Anyone quoting you a confident zero today is ahead of the documentation.

Talk to a person

If you want the analysis run on your building rather than a generic one, we need your most recent electricity bill and the roof's age. That is genuinely the whole ask.

Email us about our district

You will get a reply from connor@greenharp.consulting — the same person who wrote this page. No sequence, no CRM drip, no call centre.

Green Harp Holdings LLC d/b/a Green Harp Consulting · connor@greenharp.consulting

This site reproduces published program requirements as an aid to Minnesota school districts. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the Minnesota Department of Commerce or the Clean Energy Resource Teams, and the Department's own determination governs in every case. Grant rates, caps and dates are as published as of July 2026; the 2026 Round 2 RFP posts August 3, 2026 and controls on any conflict. Figures shown in the tools on this site are illustrative unless you enter your district's own data, and no figure here is an offer.