The Walmart store on West Central Avenue in Sylvania Township was one of 12 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in Ohio to receive rooftop solar installations as part of the company’s goal to be powered 100 percent by renewable energy.
Walmart announced March 4 that it has installed solar panels at 12 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in Ohio. Those solar installations will add approximately 6 million kilowatt hours of generation production to supply from 5 percent to 20 percent of each store’s overall electricity use, according to Walmart.
“Solar power makes sense for Walmart and it makes sense for Ohio,” said David Ozment, senior director of energy at Walmart, in the company’s announcement to the media.
Walmart now has solar installations operating at 200 stores, clubs and distribution centers in the U.S. and it plans to continue expanding its use of solar and other renewable energies.
“It’s another step toward meeting the company’s goal of being powered 100 percent by renewable energy,” Ozment told Toledo Free Press.
Ozment reported that Walmart uses a power purchase agreement with its solar partners, SolarCity in Ohio, which owns and operate the solar systems at the retailer’s facilities. Walmart then buys the power from the solar partner at established prices over a period of years.
It provides Walmart with the opportunity “to lock in the price of power over a number of years so the company can take control of its energy costs,” Ozment said.
The more than 4.7 megawatts of generation capacity at the 12 Ohio locations would make the retailer the largest user of solar power in the state, according to Walmart. That represents almost one-tenth of all solar currently installed in Ohio, according to Green Energy Ohio, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting environmentally and economically sustainable energy policies and practices.
“Walmart’s installation of solar on 12 store rooftops is the largest solar commitment ever made by retail business in Ohio,” said Bill Spratley, executive director of Green Energy Ohio. “Walmart’s solar arrays will eliminate 5,500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions or the equivalent of taking the emissions of 1,152 cars off the road each year.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership program ranks Walmart as the largest on-site green power generator in the U.S. Renewable energy credits available in states such as Ohio encourage companies to install solar and reduce their overall energy costs, according to solar industry sources.
“Walmart continues to forge new ground as the No. 1 corporate solar user in America,” said Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity.
The new installations are expected to increase the state’s overall solar generation capacity by more than 10 percent, according to Rive. Solar panels were installed by SolarCity at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores located in Austintown, Franklin, Greenville, Loveland, Mason, Middletown, Milford, Toledo, Youngstown, Xenia and two locations in Cincinnati.
The project was also the first solar installation for SolarCity in the state of Ohio, Rive said. The company serves thousands of commercial and residential solar customers in 14 states through 31 operations centers.
SolarCity does not disclose its supplier relationships as a matter of policy.The particular project usually drives considerations about the type of panels it uses, according to a company spokesperson.
Walmart operates more than 10,700 stores with more than 2.2 million employees in 27 countries with sales of approximately $444 billion in fiscal year.
For more information, see http://corporate.walmart.com.
