Target Passes Walmart As Top US Corporate Installer of Solar Power (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Target is the top corporate installer of solar power in the USA with 147MW installed on 300 stores. Walmart is close behind with 140MW, while Ikea has installed solar on 90% of its retail locations. The Solar Energy Institute of America (SEIA) report shows over 1,000MW of solar installed in almost 2,000 unique installations by the largest corporate entities in the country. Additionally these groups have more than doubled their installation volume year on year, with 2015 seeing a total of 130MW, while 2016 is projected to be closer to 280MW. Big box retail locations offer some of the best potential spaces for solar power to be installed -- on top of square, flat structures and in previously built parking lots. The average size of an installation by a company in this group is about 500kW -- 75X the size of an average residential solar installation. The RE100 organization has signed up 81 global corporations (many on the SEIA list) who have pledged 100% renewable energy. "We're incredibly proud of the progress we've made in improving building efficiencies and reducing environmental impact. Our commitment to installing solar panels on 500 stores and distribution centers by 2020 is evidence of that progress" -- said John Leisen, vice president of property management at Target. The geographic breakdown of solar installations is based upon three main drivers -- good sunlight, expensive electricity and state level renewable mandates, with Southern California having all three. The northeast USA, with its expensive electricity and aggressive clean energy push, has been on par with California (50% of total solar) for commercial installations. A report put together by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) breaks down the various state level laws that support corporations going green -- and, without surprise, it becomes clear that the legal support of renewable energy is a definite driver.

Comments

Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

"...it becomes clear that taxpayer support of renewable energy is a definite driver."

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

And the support of the US Miltary is the protector of Middle East oil. What is your point? It is called leveling the playing field.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called gouging the American taxpayers who wish not to support high military spending, or corporate welfare.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the US to stop being the worlds police and then maybe we can talk about dropping incentives and tax breaks for Solar.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[ShanghaiBill]

And the support of the US Miltary is the protector of Middle East oil. What is your point? It is called leveling the playing field.

Solar power is used to generate electricity. Oil is used as a transportation fuel. Those are two different markets. You should compare solar subsidies to tax breaks for gas fracking instead. That would make more sense.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[aaarrrgggh]

Rooftop solar is good energy policy: domestic, local, distributed. Add in on-site storage, and you have a real winner, as the maximum solar penetration can safely go from 15% to 45% of peak load(/circuit capacity). For bonus points, add in pollution, and fuel cells even start to make good sense at a reasonable penetration. I am working on a couple new buildings now with a combined PV system of about 1MW... for pretty small buildings in the scheme of things.

Net Zero is coming...

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax payers do not get line item veto's when it comes to how the government spends the collected federal taxes. And funding the most powerful military on the planet is going to pay great dividends in the future when WW3 really kicks into high gear. After a few billion casualties we may be able to finally give peace a chance while we take that peaceful interlude to re-arm for the next war. And when it comes to paying federal income taxes the richest 20% of Americans fork over nearly 87% of all the federal income tax collected by the government. 49% of Americans do not pay any federal taxes at all. If you want to complain about taxes you would be better served looking at the taxes people pay at the State and Local levels. As an example I pay almost $2500 a year that is ear marked for spending on county schools and I do not have any children. If I have to contribute that much money I want to see proof that the school system is actually producing educated students instead of a bunch of morons who think using Facebook counts as a marketable IT skill.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[PopeRatzo]

Rooftop solar is good energy policy: domestic, local, distributed. Add in on-site storage, and you have a real winner, as the maximum solar penetration can safely go from 15% to 45% of peak load(/circuit capacity). For bonus points, add in pollution, and fuel cells even start to make good sense at a reasonable penetration. I am working on a couple new buildings now with a combined PV system of about 1MW... for pretty small buildings in the scheme of things.

Your sensible argument has no place in this discussion. You must have gotten lost on your way to Huffington Post you filthy hippie.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Electric cars now run on Oil? When did this happen...

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[ShanghaiBill]

Electric cars now run on Oil? When did this happen...

Less than 1% of electricity comes from solar. Less than 1% of that is used to power electric cars. A market overlap of 0.01% is negligible.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah if u live in Arizona or Florida. not so good for northern states

Re:Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

The overwhelming reason they do it is they are not fucking stupid.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Ranbot]

yeah if u live in Arizona or Florida. not so good for northern states

The myth that solar only works in southern states was debunked years ago. There's plenty of sun in northern climates to make solar very efficient. The country with the most installed solar capacity in the world, Germany (~32,000 MW), has a nearly identical climate to most northern US states (e.g. four full seasons, clouds, rain, snow, mountains, valleys, forests, etc.).

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Nunya666]

yeah if u live in Arizona or Florida. not so good for northern states

Solar is also not an option for those of us who live in neighborhoods with a lot of trees, like mine. My rooftop gets very little direct sunlight because of the trees. I would need a huge price discount to make the cost of solar have a positive ROI.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a red blooded conservative and I endorse this message. You want to stop playing world cop? This is how you do it, eliminate foreign oil interests. I bet every dollar spent on solar is 10 not spent on bombs

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Basically, what counts as "northern states" in the US is roughly south-Germany-like. Which is where there's a lot of solar installations in Germany.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory:

But what about when the sun goes DOWN!!! What THEN, eh?

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[RabidReindeer]

Florida may call itself the Sunshine State, but it's not one of the top states for uninterrupted sunshine.

Good thing, too, since it gets hot enough without those summer-afternoon rainstorms.

Re: Wrapup phrase should read

[RabidReindeer]

Dick Cheney says you're a puling Liberal. He and his friends get far too much income from oil and bombs to listen to that kind of commie talk.

Yeah, But

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll still shop at Walmart because the prices are lower, and Trannies have to go to their proper bathrooms. Their mental illness be damned.

Re:Yeah, But

[PopeRatzo]

I'll still shop at Walmart because the prices are lower, and Trannies have to go to their proper bathrooms.

That's what you think.

Re: Yeah, But

[PopeRatzo]

Trump 2016

Re:Yeah, But

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how Target makes a mother who is breast feeding leave the safety of a change room to go into the creeper rape bathrooms. Because after all, anyone who declares themselves to be a female at this moment should be able to leer at women in their most private of moments.

I really loathe people who feel that because less than one percent of our population is mentally unsound we should be forced to capitulate,and embrace, their insanity. Otherwise we are a sexist homophobic racist bigot hitler kind of person! We find ourselves dragged into their insanity. Killing people in some foreign country; ok as the current president is a democrat. Killing someone who murdered dozens of people; not ok... THAT is murder. Police killing someone wielding a gun; ok if he is white, but murder if he isn't. Killing a human being in the fetal state who could live outside the mothers body; oh... yeah... totally ok... in fact we should force EVERYONE to fund this disgrace to humanity.

Like it wasn't bad enough that I am forced to fund the mass murder of humans in Syria already. We should have never closed the mental asylums. There would be a place for SJWs had we not.

Re: Yeah, But

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how Target makes a mother who is breast feeding leave the safety of a change room to go into the creeper rape bathrooms. Because after all, anyone who declares themselves to be a female at this moment should be able to leer at women in their most private of moments.

Man, you picked a bad example, since Target policy is well-established that they do support breastfeeding in their stores, including the fitting rooms, meaning that it was an individual employee who made actions that were not the company's, and this woman in question said she would feed her daughter in public anyway without covering up.

Besides, leering in a bathroom? What exactly is this fear driven by?

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Target still sucks... I wouldn't shop there if they stocked the sun itself...

Sounds good

[Ol Olsoc]

While deniers continue to say that solar simply doesn't work, stores doing this seem to still be making profit.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Target has already had a 19% decline in stock price this year alone. They are definitely not in a profitable mode. If i was a stock holder i'd be questioning why they are spending all this money to install solar panels and not trying to improve there profit by selling their retail goods. Sounds like the TGT board needs to be more focused on their core business.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Also these installations are being subsidized by the federal government for tax credits. So they are really not doing this to be green but to save tax dollars at the expenses of the American public.

Re:Sounds good

[Ol Olsoc]

Target has already had a 19% decline in stock price this year alone. They are definitely not in a profitable mode. If i was a stock holder i'd be questioning why they are spending all this money to install solar panels and not trying to improve there profit by selling their retail goods. Sounds like the TGT board needs to be more focused on their core business.

Musta been those solar panels, eh? Everyone knows that the sun doesn't shine after dark.

Re:Sounds good

[Ol Olsoc]

Also these installations are being subsidized by the federal government for tax credits. So they are really not doing this to be green but to save tax dollars at the expenses of the American public.

Now tlk to me me about petroleum subsidies and releasing nuc plants form liability. Even transportation ethanol gets yuge subsidies.

Re:Sounds good

[PopeRatzo]

Also these installations are being subsidized by the federal government for tax credits. So they are really not doing this to be green but to save tax dollars at the expenses of the American public.

It's disgraceful. It's not like they got those tax credits in an honest way, like losing money running casinos.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Deny this. (Warning: contains actual grid data for California.) Success should be measured by reducing emissions, and renewables everywhere (excepting hydro) have a long history of failure by that metric. California is a model of something, but not an effective path to decarbonization.

When it is cost effective to disconnect from the grid without subsidies, then feel free to claim that solar works.

Re:Sounds good

[Dutch Gun]

No one (sane) questions whether solar works or not. It's a pretty straightforward technology, and it's intuitively ideal for reducing demand during peak hours, typically the middle of the work day. There are, however, questions about whether the economics make sense without government subsidies, which is where we'd like to eventually end up, I think.

For businesses, obviously an economic incentive is the most straightforward driver, and if it's good for the environment too, that's a happy bonus. I'm hopeful that over the next few years we'll start seeing some actual results with real numbers for installations on a mass scale over time - not projections, but real, historical data. I guess it also depends whether these corporations are willing to release those numbers over the next decade or so. You'd think that would be a requirement of getting these generous government subsidies (anyone know if it is?).

Re:Sounds good

[Ol Olsoc]

No one (sane) questions whether solar works or not.

I'm inclined to agree, but I get a lot of the "it won't work" responses on Slashdot.

It's a pretty straightforward technology, and it's intuitively ideal for reducing demand during peak hours, typically the middle of the work day. There are, however, questions about whether the economics make sense without government subsidies, which is where we'd like to eventually end up, I think.

Certainly. But since technology desn't stay in one place, That situation willt change. The economies of scale can make some pretty complex and involved processes very inexpensive. I was shocked to see that a lot of solar installations are even going in place in Alaska. Now while it's true that the really long nights of winter render the cells pretty useless, they allow them to save a lot of money on diesel fuel, and can stockpile it during the summer for those winter days. In the summer they have a lot of sunlight.

I'm big on alternative energy, and was still surprised to see an economic solution to a big logistics problem in that neck of the woods.

Some will remain opposed for various reasons, and no amount of progress will change that.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like to see some rationality out of the faction that that claims the subsidies were "hardly necessary" in the past, the panel prices have no dropped to half, but the subsidies are still necessary.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The economy of solar panels is just fine.
Flying in and installing solar panels is a one time cost more or less.
Flying in fuel every week for a generator is a massive cost.
Not all of us live in the middle of suburbia, or on a river that can be reached by boats.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

The ROI is around 7 years now, possibly even less depending on their solution and negotiation. I'd bet Target plans to be around far longer than that.

Re:Sounds good

[Arnold Reinhold]

The data you link to shows that large scale hydro energy output has declined sharply since 2010, presumably due to the drought, while wind and solar output have increased by about the same amount, making up the difference and leaving thermal output flat over the period, since overall demand was flat. If the drought is temporary, this will correct itself; if the drought is due to long term climate change, continued growth in wind and solar will soon start to reduce thermal generation needs. Either way, it's wind and solar that are working, large scale hydro not so much.

Re:Sounds good

[Ranbot]

Target has already had a 19% decline in stock price this year alone... If i was a stock holder i'd be questioning why they are spending all this money to install solar panels and not trying to improve there profit by selling their retail goods.

Target and Walmart and other companies of their size are looking for the long-term benefits of solar. Solar pays for itself after several years, and it gives predictable energy costs that won't fluctuate with federal, state, or global politics for long-term planning. If you're a stock holder in a company that is only planning for their next quarterly or yearly profit update, it's time to sell.

Re:Sounds good

[Ol Olsoc]

I'd just like to see some rationality out of the faction that that claims the subsidies were "hardly necessary" in the past,

Who claimed they were "hardly necessary"?

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

While deniers continue to say that solar simply doesn't work, stores doing this seem to still be making profit.

Stock prices are lower now - have a peek. The company also receives large gov't tax breaks for it. Solar WORKS, there's no questioning that. It's larger-scale thought that comes to play when determining success or failure.

Panels gather heat during the day and emit infrared at night as a result. If you had an area (let's say a city) with 20% of the homes and 80% of the businesses with rooftops completely covered in solar panels, you're going to have a very bad climate situation if the day is sunny and clouds roll in before sunset. Now take that city and expand the area to the entire country of the United States... Then, take that and expand it to the world's countries capable of affording the switch and maintaining it. There is a byproduct of solar - heat. More sub would be absorbed and emitted as heat on sunny days and that energy is emitted back into space at night (with a percentage retained by the ionosphere - how we survive now). On cloudy evenings, most of the already present infrared is trapped and heats the air molecules (especially water). Guess what? You just contributed to global warming. The more solar is used to prevent global warming, the more global warming takes place.

It's clear, given that knowledge and meteorological / physics fact, that the use of solar is for profit, given the fact that it does the opposite of what it's supposed to. For naysayers, use your brain for a second and think - you're covering surfaces that are either black, semi-black, not black (more white and grey), or ground (shades of tan, to orange, to brown, given locale). Light emission is a result of trapping of light and conversion to energy, speedin' up those electrons. The light that isn't transformed is bounced back up, sometimes refracted, mostly reflected. That's why everything HAS A COLOR. When you cover an area, you're preventing plants from growing with full solar exposure, and you're also keeping the ground cooler. The buildings that are NOT completely black on the roof are now driven to indirectly emit more heat because it's not the roof - it's what's covering it that's trapping the converted broadband light, reflecting some and heating up with lower wavelengths. Black rooftops do what solar panels do now - emit IR at night. So now we've made more non-black rooftops the equivalent of black rooftops (in concept - energy absorption and emission mediums). You're getting electricity during the day, but contributing to global warming at night.

Now, given the facts, increased solar panel coverage either changes little (black roofs), or adds to (non-black roofs) contribution to global warming AND less plant absorption of light. I don't understand why people don't think about the big picture when talking about solutions. You're not an idiot if you realize fact, you're just educated. Best I can figure based on psychology and Human behavior in general (selfishness and control desire), is that people don't want to change their opinion, position, or declaration of knowledge based on those factors.

Simple article to state fact, unless you believe NASA "doesn't know their science".

We need to do more than come up with a solution and think it fixes things. Some of it reverses what we fix, not to mention what's emitted into the atmosphere in the manufacturing of these things (solar panels and all associated equipment, in this case; no, there aren't places where they use solar energy to mine, pulverize, separate, etc, ore into metals). I'm not big on the "OMG industry is multiplying global warming" crud, but throw that in if you want to. Don't read this if you think NASA is full of crap, either.

Re:Sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

they were never necessary. they are an extremely expensive and inefficient way to speed things up. some of us thing that is a good idea, at least with respect to our total public investment relative to our other spending decisions.

idiot shareholders are reason to go private

[bussdriver]

It is nice to see a publicly traded corporation actually doing LONG TERM PLANNING. This will save Target money long term and provide good PR in the short term. I would think most retail stores use less power than their roof collects... I wonder how they deal with all that extra power when many places have a whole different set of grid-tie regulations when your output exceeds just a few MW. In my area you dare not exceed 3 MW because then you must become a power company.

Whenever a corporation goes public it is just a matter of time before they become evil, or more evil than they were. Short termed thinking of shareholders and their similar minded funds are what cause the bean counters to take over control from the competent management and engineers and founders which made the corporation succeed in the first place (except in those cases where they go public just to get more suckers to invest.)

Re:idiot shareholders are reason to go private

[Anonymous Coward]

Target has not been getting any good PR lately (installing solar panels is not going to increase their image). Also one of there board members just resigned (Cough Cough CEO of Wells Fargo who is caught up in a major scandal). So since there stock is in sharp decline they have scandals all around (the queers using the wrong bathroom). I agree that long term planning is needed but only when they have several consecutive quarters of yearly growth and profits. Right now they are doing bad and should not be spending this money on solar panels if shareholders want to see there stock go up. One mans opinion.

1.21 GW

[Anonymous Coward]

Just 210 MW to go!

We're incredibly proud of the progress...

[Anonymous Coward]

we've made in shifting the pollution required to generate energy on to third world countries so we can pretend we are actually doing something "green".

Walmart also uses direct solar

[Trailer Trash]

Walmart has been using direct solar for lighting for 10+ years now - something I haven't seen Target do anywhere. In a newer Walmart the fluorescent lights only come on as needed to keep the light at a certain level. Noon with bright sunlight will have no electrical lighting on in a store.

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

The grid of little squares are the solar powered "lights".

Young Target for comparison:

https://www.google.com/maps/@3...

Re:Walmart also uses direct solar

[Solandri]

This. Commercial PV panels are about 18% efficient at converting solar energy into electricity, and the best fluorescent bulbs are about 15% efficient at converting electricity into light (the rest becomes heat). So if you install PV panels to power your lights, you're only converting about 2.7% of the sunlight hitting your solar panels into interior light.

In other words, covering your roof entirely with PV panels gets you as much solar lighting as cutting holes in 2.7% of your roof. The little squares in the Walmart pic you've linked covers about 1/12th the roof (one per 3x4 grid), or 8.3%. So it's providing 3x more free lighting than if you'd covered the entire roof with PV panels. Most of the warehouse stores I've been to (Costco, Home Depot, etc) use similar natural lighting extensively. (Note that you can still cover the space in between these skylights with PV panels.)

Re:Walmart also uses direct solar

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for posting anon, but having difficulties logging in right now. Also, full disclosure, I'm a property technician for Target.

There's also a big difference in how Target and Walmart design their stores. There are a few stores Target has that uses direct lighting in, one in the greater metro Detroit area. For the most part though it isn't as feasible with how they have their drop ceilings set up. Walmart uses a more industrial design with a high, exposed girder system and full runs of florescents across the entire building. Target on the other hand uses a drop ceiling with an average height of 14ft and a floor with a high gloss finish to maximize the uses of it's grid pattern lighting solutions. Any type of direct lighting would be difficult to add into the brand image Target has for it's stores.

Re:Walmart also uses direct solar

[tlhIngan]

This. Commercial PV panels are about 18% efficient at converting solar energy into electricity, and the best fluorescent bulbs are about 15% efficient at converting electricity into light (the rest becomes heat). So if you install PV panels to power your lights, you're only converting about 2.7% of the sunlight hitting your solar panels into interior light.

Fluorescent lights are around 80% efficient (similar to LEDs). Incandescent lights (traditional light bulbs) are around 15% efficient. It's why you can replace a 60W light bulb with a 13W CFL.

Re:Walmart also uses direct solar

[Trailer Trash]

This. Commercial PV panels are about 18% efficient at converting solar energy into electricity, and the best fluorescent bulbs are about 15% efficient at converting electricity into light (the rest becomes heat). So if you install PV panels to power your lights, you're only converting about 2.7% of the sunlight hitting your solar panels into interior light.

Fluorescent lights are around 80% efficient (similar to LEDs). Incandescent lights (traditional light bulbs) are around 15% efficient. It's why you can replace a 60W light bulb with a 13W CFL.

Uh, no. An incandescent bulb is 3-4% efficient, 5% efficient at best (that is 5% of the energy is emitted as visible light, 95% is emitted as heat). Fluorescent bulbs and LEDs are far more efficient, but nowhere near even 50%. Fluorescent bulbs are around 4x as efficient, LEDs around 6x.

Using direct lighting instead of PV + electric light is a huge win, and leaves the rest of the roof open for PV installation if you want.

To give an idea of how much lighting is used, I counted the lights in a Hobby Lobby last time I was there (what else would a guy do in there?) and they had about 3000 40W fluorescent lamps. That's 120KW just for lighting (most of which turns into heat that the A/C has to pump out, by the way) which works out to about $12/hour here in TN. Walmarts don't light as brightly as a Hobby Lobby, but they have larger stores. The energy savings from the skylights is really big.

Re:Walmart also uses direct solar

[Trailer Trash]

Sorry for posting anon, but having difficulties logging in right now. Also, full disclosure, I'm a property technician for Target.

There's also a big difference in how Target and Walmart design their stores. There are a few stores Target has that uses direct lighting in, one in the greater metro Detroit area. For the most part though it isn't as feasible with how they have their drop ceilings set up. Walmart uses a more industrial design with a high, exposed girder system and full runs of florescents across the entire building. Target on the other hand uses a drop ceiling with an average height of 14ft and a floor with a high gloss finish to maximize the uses of it's grid pattern lighting solutions. Any type of direct lighting would be difficult to add into the brand image Target has for it's stores.

Thanks for the info, I've noticed the difference in style but didn't give it much thought. Still, it would be nice for them to figure out a way to get the best of both worlds.

Target passes...?

[necro81]

I thought targets were things that were supposed to be passed - i.e., the target stays where it is and I pass it. Instead, Target passes you! Is this Soviet Russia?

Curious numbers

[LynnwoodRooster]

Target is the top corporate installer of solar power in the USA with 147MW installed on 300 stores. Walmart is close behind with 140MW, while Ikea has installed solar on 90% of its retail locations.

147MW, 140MW, 90%. One of these is not like the others...