Wal-Mart Beating Ikea, Apple in U.S. Solar Panel Installations

Ehren Goossens, Bloomberg
July 30, 2012 | 7 Comments

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has installed more than 150 U.S. solar projects and expects to have as much as 90 megawatts of capacity by year-end, more than Ikea Group and Apple Inc.

Wal-Mart’s San Diego store is the 100th to get solar panels in California, the company said Monday in a statement. The company currently has 62 megawatts of panels installed at U.S. locations, and also operates fuel cells and wind turbines at some sites.

Wal-Mart, with 4,522 stores in the U.S., expects to have 1,000 solar-powered locations by 2020, Marty Gilbert, director of energy at the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company, said in an interview. The retailer gets about 4 percent of its power from renewable sources and plans to install another 100 solar systems by the end of 2012, demonstrating that renewable energy is economically viable to businesses.

“We are trying to show folks that you can not only pursue these sustainability initiatives, they also make business sense,” he said.

The company expects its use of renewable power to drive down prices, he said.

“The more we get involved and commit to volume, the more the prices come down for the technology,” he said. “Prices for solar panels, fuel cells, wind turbines to some degree, they are all approaching grid parity.”

Economic Sense

The company installed its first five solar projects in 2008. It’s installing panels in markets where utility rates are higher, such as California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Ohio and Connecticut, said Gilbert. Each system must add to the bottom line for the individual store.

“The only projects that we were doing are the ones that economically make sense at the store level.”

Wal-Mart has 26 fuel-cell projects and six projects. A 1.1- megawatt wind turbine at a store in Red Bluff, California, will be operational within a month, said Gilbert.

“Wall Street was watching to see if this was a public relations game and we would be passing the cost on to our customers, said Gilbert. ‘‘It’s not done on a portfolio basis, it’s every store analyzed individually.”

Other large companies are also installing U.S. solar projects. Apple Inc. is building a 20-megawatt solar farm and a 5-megawatt fuel-cell system to power a data center in North Carolina.

Ikea has solar projects at 26 U.S. sites and is planning to install 13 more, with total capacity of 38 megawatts.

7 Comments

Sandy Caruso
August 1, 2012

Anonymous....trying to hide? So pray tell us all WHERE are the panels being installed on the Wal-Mart stores are being purchased from?

ROLF BREUER
August 1, 2012

Apple will install 640,000 sf of solar panels on their new headquarters in Cupertino, CA.

DAVID SHEPARD
July 31, 2012

Walmart and other large and even small corporations are wise to invest in solar applications where they are initially cost effective as some day all locations will be cost effective for solar as all fossil fuel prices will continue to rise . In some Arkansas locations Walmart should look into Geothermal Power as they may already have stores where Geothermal Power may be a cost effect investment .

ANONYMOUS
July 31, 2012

h2solarsystems - nice garbage goal on yah. I know a priest who drinks ... a lot; at worst, it makes him a bad cliche. First, you might check the public record to see who Walmart's solar suppliers and installers are before you cry total yellow peril. You might ask why #1 American corp Exxon is not even in the top 10 in this list. Ikea isn't even a top 10 company - how did they do so well in rooftop solar? Explain why the all American Repubs are down on the military's attempts to get unhooked from foreign oil and investments in sustainable energy?

Sandy Caruso
July 31, 2012

Of course Wal-Mart is going to be a leader in solar energy installation on their stores. They BUY all their products from China for crying out loud. Why not solar panels too?

Gerry Wootton
July 31, 2012

'The company expects its use of renewable power to drive down prices'. Duuuh. Economy of scale - you don't need Walmart to tell you that. When you look at the data, the cost of fossil fuel energy is consistently increasing at a rate higher than inflation; mature renewable power i.e. hydro electric is the cheapest available. Other renewables e.g. wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc. are in the early adopter phase - the longer we wait to escalate utilization, the longer we delay the availability of low cost energy. Experience curve / economy of scale. My current call anywhere in North America price is just what you could rent a telephone for in 1880 (0% inflation!) - there's nothing like market to drive down cost. For the 'first, we need more R&D' drones, I do R&D with budget apportioned relative to revenue. It's so simple: if you buy more, we'll make it better and cheaper.

ANONYMOUS
July 31, 2012

SolarCity has had the benefit of doing most of this work for Walmart over the past 2 years which has helped them diversify geographically as the economics of solar have improved and made it feasible to entertain rooftop solar outside of just California and Hawaii. Their focus on use of quality bankable suppliers (like Schneider Electric for Inverters), their ability to execute projects quickly, and their focus on driving costs down certainly align them with Walmart's core values.