Yesterday we posted news of a solar milestone – 100 stores in California powered by this technology. Currently, we have more than 150 solar projects across the U.S., and a Bloomberg story noted that Walmart is ahead of other companies on this front. But when you’ve set a goal of one day being powered 100 percent by renewable energy, there’s always room for improvement. So we continue to work toward our next step: 1,000 locations using solar power by 2020.
Check out the full story here.
I HAD TWO PANLES ON MY HORSE TRAILER WITH LIVING QUARTERS. WORKED GREAT.
I wish Walmart would market solar, that would shut the democraps up.
I DONT wish Walmart would market solar. Everything somewhat similar in technology I buy from them has to be replaced within a short timeframe.
Good work Walmart. Thank You!Please, consider switching to Hydrogen gas, for your trucks.Yes, it will take time and money to go to H2.However, Walmart has the Leadership and clout to make it work.And, no pollution from making energy burning H2 and O2.
Solar for sure !! Why buy junk ? We have a brand new plant -collecting dust !Put it to good use. I have a feeling it was deliberatly shut down by someone onWall Street.
I wish the people that run WAL*MART ran our government! That way, they would bring projects in on time and within budget !
Not a single Solar panel manufacturing plant is powered by solar, that is very telling as to the cost effectiveness. I mean they can get the panels at absolute cost, yet it is still not economically feasible to use them. Walmart putting them on a few stores is a political move and not a business move. If Walmart did put them on all their stores you would see a big increase in the cost of their products.
Wal Mart would be one of the country’s biggest electricity producers if they covered the parking lots with these things, carport style. Customers could park in the shade.
i’ve been trying to sugar coat my feelings regarding walmart for about 15 minutes now and i cannot come up with an anything.the items you sell, are cheap, cheap, cheap.i made the mistake of buying a pair of dickie shorts a month ago. when i put them on at home, the fit, feel and overall quality of the product is not dickie. it’s like a massive dickie reject. i think somewhere there’s an empty bottle of starch weeping from being emptied on them.i love the massive “green” effort being put forward by walmart. keep up the good work. you need all this alt. power b/c there’s a 4 football field sized store of crap everywhere you look. you won’t catch me in an LED isle.sorry.
This is exciting news! What would really help is if you had a line of renewable energy products. I know you have 1 kind of wind turbine on your website. We hope to go off the grid soon and would love to buy from you.
The problem with solar is a long term model has not been perfected yet. It years they will start breaking down and maintenance will be a huge expense and most of the units will end up in landfills. It’s like hybrid cars, long term batteries have not been perfected yet. The electronics and battery cost will outweigh the benefit of these cars. The best I ever heard it explained was an engineer that said they didn’t event A/C until long after there was electricity. Both solar and hybrid are great ideas but to have the government WASTE money for political and financial gain to pretend they have the answer is dishonest. This money could be well spent doing good, not to fill the pockets of politicans, examples; politicians like BO, Al Gore and companies like Solyndra.
Larry there is electricity, and there’s roads too. And solar panels with 25 year warranties, and inverters with 20 year warranties. And totaled ten year old hybrids sold for scrap but their batteries are still working and mainly sitting on the shelves in recycling yards since so few are needed because they last so long.Heck there may be some politicians that aren’t even lining their own pockets…I wouldn’t bet money I’d be needing real soon on that last one though.
The store roof featured in the photo also has skylights that will admit natural light without the need for electronics. Bravo/Brava
I notice that there are skylights on the roof in the above photo. The store is illuminated during the day by natural light without the need for PV to electricity to artificial lighting.
Yeah well the thing about solar is this. It’s produces millions of tons of toxic waste to manufacture these panels and the companies are shipping the stuff all over the place to other states to storage facilities. They ship by trains and truck creating a huge carbon footprint plus the fact that now you have all this toxic waste. Plus it’s very expensive, like $30,000 to $40,000 to install a system on an average house. And the life expectancy of the components is 15 to 25 years. Kinda hard to see the upside when you look at the big picture.
I have a solar panel I bought 30 years ago used that came from a concentrating solar project.Concentrating solar is the hardest way to use a panel.The panel was rated at 100 watts when I bought it and still produces 95 watts today.Other than occasional washing every few years it has required no maintenance at all.Some early panels have had delamination problems on a small percentage of the units but we have learned from those mistakes.Far from ending up in landfills due to being non function able it is far more likely that they will be replaced while still working because much more effecient ones are available.I have seen internet sites where weed overgrown or vandalized panels are used as proof that solar is “worthless”.That’s like saying a car is no good because you let the garage collapse on it.
Why not make roofing material that produces solar energy which would cost less and be better looking on homes and buildings. Don’t tell me we don’t have the means to produce the materials. We only lack the foresight and the desire. Maybe our politicians and our government could learn and do something for our country and the citizens who support. Think how much cleaner this would be for our air and our environment . Think about it!
We installed a 30 KW solar unit last year. The bonus was the shading of the roof from the panels during the summer, significantly lowering our cooling requirements, while we generate electricity. Cool.
If Wal-mart realy cares about the inviroment why not sell things that last. Our dumps are filled with their cheaply made items..
I’d love to have a store like Walmart offer solar panels for homes and businesses and apartment buildings. We would definitely install them on an apt building we have.
Adding solar panels to a building is the easy part- we know how to do it effectively and today’s panels are proven with a consistent 20 to 25 year warranty. The real challenge is to design our buildings to dramatically reduce energy consumption, which in turn makes adding the renewable energy a viable option. I would hope to see Walmart address the building envelope in their new stores, as well as other energy reducing “net zero” design strategies. Having designed the nation’s first net zero energy public school, Richardsville Elementary, in Bowling Green Kentucky, we learned that saving energy , and achieving net zero is really a subtraction problem to solve first. Unless you couple dramatic energy reduction with the addition of renewables, it is impossible to make a financial payback model that makes sense.