More Solar Power For Woolworths And Costco

Supermarket giant Woolworths and membership warehouse club Costco are continuing to build on their solar energy capacity in Australia.

Solar Installed At Woolworths Moree

The Moree Champion reports a 99.96 kilowatt system comprising 357 solar panels has been installed at the Woolworths store at Moree in New South Wales.

“It will not only reduce the store’s environmental footprint, but also help keep costs down so we can continue offering the best possible prices to our customers,” said Woolworths Moree store manager Andrew Finch.

Moree is one of a hundred Woolworths Group sites across Australia that will have solar installations by the end of this year. According to the report, Woolworths Group generated more than 2,200 megawatt hours of electricity with solar power last year.

Woolworths’ solar installations won’t end with Moree – back in February we reported the company’s expansion of its Adelaide Regional Distribution Centre (ARDC) at Gepps Cross will include the installation of 3,500 solar panels on the ARDC’s rooftop. That project won’t be completed until around the first quarter of next year.

On a related note, earlier this month Woolworths announced it is the first retailer in Australia, and the first supermarket anywhere in the world, to issue Green Bonds certified by the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI). The Bonds will support the financing of green initiatives such as the installation of solar panels on the roofs of Woolworths Group stores and distribution centres. On Monday, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation said it had invested $30 million in the Woolworths Group green bond.

Solar For Costco Kemps Creek Facility

Nine.com.au reports Costco’s new $100 million warehouse in Kemps Creek in Sydney’s south west is nearing completion. The 20,000 square metre facility includes a 2,000 square metre freezer and 4,000 square metre cool room.

Helping to power the facility will be a large rooftop solar panel system. The capacity of the system isn’t noted, but the report states: “$1.5 million in solar panels on the roof which will be paid off within five years.” Based on the cost of commercial solar being around $1,000 to $1,300 per kilowatt currently, that could put the Costco system at between 1.1MW to 1.5MW.

This isn’t the first solar installation for Costco in Australia. A couple of others include a 1.1 MW system in Northlakes, Queensland and 1MW system in Adelaide, South Australia. Both of those systems were installed by Todae Solar; a company that used to cover residential installations also, but now focuses on commercial projects of 50kW capacity or more.

Costco was an early adopter of rooftop solar in the USA – I found reference to a 595kW system installed at a Lake Elsinore, California warehouse back in 2007. 595kW is still big by today’s standards, but 12 years ago it was humongous for a rooftop installation.