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Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store
MojoKid writes "We hear about green deployment practices all the time, but it's often surrounding facilities such as data centers rather than retail stores. However, Walgreens is determined to go as green as possible, and to that end, the company announced plans for the first net zero energy retail store. The store is slated to be built at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Keeney Street in Evanston, Illinois, where an existing Walgreens is currently being demolished. The technologies Walgreens is plotting to implement in this new super-green store will include solar panels and wind turbines to generate power; geothermal technology for heat; and efficient energy consumption with LED lighting, daylight harvesting, and 'ultra-high-efficiency' refrigeration."
...is it powered by the tears of employees?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
I confess that I'm not really familiar with the technology, but this one gives me pause. They are building a Walgreens on a street corner that will use geothermal energy for heat? Can someone with a bit of knowledge share some insight on exactly how they plan to do that in a corner store?
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
that never has anything I want so I end up going to the CVS across the street. Never understood how places like kmart and walgreens stay in business, espectally wallgreens, which is a drug store, with less medical supplies in it than the grocery store.
Daylight harvesting is a nasty misnomer - it really just means turning the artificial light down when natural light makes the space acceptably-bright. This is why Walmart stores built in the past two decades have skylights.
The 2012 IECC requires daylight harvesting or separate switching for daylight zones; complying with new codes is hardly a newsworthy achievement.
LED lighting for commercial spaces just recently reached a point where lumen output, specifically illuminance at the target work plane, can equal that of fluorescent for the same power input.
With a cost roughly double that of fluorescent fixtures, LED fixtures' lamp life allows the owner to spend less on maintenance labor, with a payback on the order of 2-10 years. A company as big as Walgreens would be foolish to use anything other than LED unless they expect to go broke before reaching their ROI.
I like what these guys are doing, but the PR spin is a bit much.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Engineering estimates suggest that the location will produce 256,000 kilowatts per year while using just 200,000.
Shouldn't that be kilowatt hours? Even if it was kwhrs the numbers are suspect. 200,000/ 365 days per year / 18 hours (12 hours open 12 hours closed using half power) = 30 Kw used in any given hour the store is open. That is equivalent to 300 100 watt incandescent bulbs. I would think a building would require much more than that.
In a shocking development, the NBC has learned that Walgreens is installing a "cushioning" carpet which is not just any simple cushiony carpet. It has tubes buried in it, and as the shoppers walk on it they squeeze these tubes and the air gets compressed and it turns a turbine that produces electricity. Mr Rube Goldberg, VP Energy Harvesting Division of Walgreens has conceded that the whole idea was his personal invention.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Out of curiosity, I pondered about the quality of service in terms of grid power at that location. So I did a little bit of Google-fu...
Evanston does make it to the first page on the list of Chicago suburbs with a lot of power outages. (And that's being sorted by total outages.) So maybe it says something about how well ComEd is doing in Evanston? (Or at least that particular neighborhood where that Walgreens is located.)
Considering that many expensive drugs have to be refrigerated, cash registers go down, etc. I could imagine there would be problems if they had to close up a busy high-volume store during prime hours on a random basis every other week because of unreliable power. In which case there would be much more incentive to go off-grid than "being green".
If you've got a problem with that, perhaps you should be looking at the conservatives that insist upon subsidizing oil, but refuse to subsidize solar, and the numerous free trade agreements that make it hard for US factories to compete with foreign ones.
Solar is solar, and ultimately any progress made their is a step in the right direction, even if it isn't perfect.
To a marketer, these people are known as suckers who is eager to part with his money for high margin crap as long as it has the word "Green" on the box.
Wait, so is China dumping solar panels at below cost, or are solar panels being sold with massive markups? I guess it just depends on which lie fits the situation best. That's the great thing about conflicting lies, when someone spends so much time and effort proving one false, their statements can be taken out of context to help support the other lie.
The simple fact is, solar generates more power than it takes to make the devices to collect it. It is a net benefit. Nothing has ever disproved that simple statement.
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If you can't solve everything, you shouldn't try to solve anything.
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I mean, Wind Turbine Syndrome can make their customers ill while they shop, creating even more business. Of course, health insurance rates might rise. /sarcasm
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Geothermal systems can be used for cooling as well as heating. Depending on the design capacity of the system a traditional A/C system may not be needed or may only kick in on the hottest days. Also the plan is for net zero, not zero every day.