Deneen Pottery President and MinnPACE customer Niles Deneen, talks about how and why his business decided to use MinnPACE financing to invest in renewable energy. 

What did you upgrade?

This beautiful array of solar panels you see behind me and all around us? I mean this was the big upgrade. We installed 130 kilowatt solar array on our building at the beginning of this year and it is just about to be turned on. The energy savings is 18% which is a good % number. The total amount of electricity we’re going to be harvesting from the sun is enough to power one of our glaze kilns which fires 1250 mugs. So a nice little way to think about what we’re able to do with this beautiful array.

Why use MinnPACE?

The two payments per year lumped under our property tax, that’s great, easy to cash flow and easy to see it. And the interest rate was very reasonable so yeah for those reasons.  It was a breeze, super simple, very straight forward, it was easier than buying a house.

What would you say to those considering MinnPACE financing?

We would absolutely make the decision again, and again, and one more time after that.  Truth be told it’s a passion project.  If you’ve got confidence in your business model and you know you’re going to be able to be in one geographical location and you have an opportunity because you own your building, it’s a no brainer. The passion points alone of being able to save 25 metric tons of coal that won’t be burned because of this (solar panels) or the 50,000 trees that are planted as the exchange, it just makes you feel good about what you can do.