Winkelman Solar has its roots in the commercial construction business in central Minnesota. Starting with the family business in 1970, called Winkelman Enterprises, our family business quickly turned commercial and landed a bunch of multi-million dollar jobs in the early 1970s and grew to over $50,000,000 per year by the end of the 1980s.
Winkelman Enterprises, as a general contractor for local commercial buildings, started to work on solving customers buildings energy issues in the early 1970s. As the middle son of founders Don and Helen Winkelman, David Winkelman’s background in Bio-Physics from St Cloud State University led him to be the lead person for energy issues in their customers buildings.
Working with the building’s energy envelope; insulation, ventilation, heating, cooling, lighting, wiring and other infrastructure on hundreds of commercial buildings, David learned energy issues in all sizes of buildings. David’s brother Dennis and he helped build and successfully install a small wind turbine on the Winkelman farm east of St Cloud MN in 1976 and became sold on renewable energy. David used solar panels starting in the 1980s to charge his small battery systems.
David continued to study other aspects of energy efficiency, wind turbines, solar electrical, solar heat, batteries and other renewable energy systems (including geothermal systems). In his own separate business in the 1980s called Winkelman’s Environmentally Responsible Construction (WERC), David landed his first commercial solar project for a customer in 1984. Since then, through various enterprises, David designed and installed over 300 wind and solar installations. David is currently CEO of Winkelman Solar LLC and is building a model solar stormproof home in
Cass County, MN in 2021.
Contact David: david@winkelmansolar.com
