Sabathani Community Center in Minneapolis transitions to clean energy example and resilience hub

In the cavernous basement of Sabathani Community Center in south Minneapolis, two massive, 50-year-old boilers are undergoing maintenance before another long winter.

Thelma and Louise, as the boilers are known, are the primary heat sources for the city's original African American community center. Sabathani spends about $20,000 annually just getting the machines prepped for winter, building manager Jesus Dominguez said.

The nearly 100-year-old building had an Energy Star rating of zero when Sabathani conducted an audit in 2019. Winter utility bills can be as high as $27,000 a month, according to Sabathani Chief Executive Scott Redd.

"We should be able to take that money and do something else with it," he said.

Sabathani Community Center was founded in 1966 by Black members of a south Minneapolis Baptist church. Today, it serves as a one-stop shop for integrated community services, with a large food shelf, workforce training and medical reference centers. Sabathani also hosts 25 organizations in its building, including a Montessori school and a printing business. Each year, about 150,000 people come through its doors.

Sabathani calls itself "the heart of south Minneapolis," and the organization aims to make that heart beat greener. As a first step, the center is one of three buildings selected by Xcel Energy for the $9 million Resilient Cities Minneapolis project, an initiative that will install rooftop solar and a large energy storage battery on the site. The goal is to ensure that Sabathani can be a refuge for the community during power outages caused by extreme weather or to cool off during heat waves.

As climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels continues to warm the atmosphere, extreme weather events and heatwaves are coming with more frequency, experts say.

But Sabathani isn't stopping there. It's in the midst of a green energy renovation to lower the building's carbon footprint and utility costs.

The Resilient Minneapolis project emerged from Xcel Energy's Integrated Distribution Plan, an effort required by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for power providers to map out their coming investments in the local energy grid.

The project began with Xcel Energy and the Minneapolis government looking for clean energy sources in the city and ways to expand energy storage capacity. The goal was to add more "non-wired" alternatives that can distribute power without connection to power lines and poles. After George Floyd's murder in May 2020, Xcel wanted to expand partnerships with organizations that are led by and serve local communities of color, according to Xcel policy and outreach manager Nick Martin.

Xcel and Minneapolis chose three centers to become resilience hubs: Sabathani, the Minneapolis American Indian Center and Renewable Energy Partners on the North Side.

Each site will receive a rooftop solar array and an onsite storage battery. About the size of a shipping container, the battery will be on the exterior of the sites, said Andre Gouin, a business technology consultant with Xcel. The batteries will typically be part of the larger electrical grid, taking power from the solar panels and distributing it throughout the service area. But during outages, the batteries can be "islanded," or isolated from the larger grid to power the individual sites.

It will be the first islanding-capable battery system in Minnesota and is based on a model Xcel developed in Colorado, Gouin said. On a full charge, the battery could power a building such as Sabathani for nearly 10 hours. With direct connection to the solar arrays, it could power the buildings perpetually if Minneapolis were to face a long-term outage.

Construction on the resilience hubs is expected to begin in summer 2024.

Sabathani Community Center's green energy journey started with an energy audit by the Center for Energy and Environment, a nonprofit organization that helps Minnesotans improve energy efficiency. The old brick junior high building, with long hallways, high ceiling classrooms, and a yellowing hardwood gym floor had nowhere to go but up from its initial score of zero.

Sabathani started small. It transitioned to LED lighting and installed smart thermostats throughout the building. The community center received grants from the city's Green Cost Share Program and the Minneapolis Foundation to cover about $90,000 worth of improvements in late 2021.

The changes are already noticeable on monthly electric bills, Redd said, with estimated annual savings of $28,000.

Sabathani Community Center now has its sights set on replacing Thelma and Louise with a geothermal heating system by raising $11.2 million to fund the upgrade.

"We're all in," Redd said.

Lowering the carbon footprint of Sabathani and the surrounding neighborhood is a major goal for the community center, he said.

If all the center's plans come together, it will serve as an example of how it's possible to retrofit an older structure. There will always be a need for Sabathani, Redd said, and saving money on power will let the organization spend those dollars serving other needs.

This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota's immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for its free newsletter to receive stories in your inbox.