Walmart investing heavily on solar powered rooftops

We don’t often think of huge companies like Walmart as being the most green of companies, unless you think greenbacks when you hear the word green, but the fact is t hat Walmart has been working hard on changing that perception.

It’s newest move in this direction has been the installation of solar panels on the roofs of 30 or their stores which is believed to produce 20% to 30% of their power needs. The panels are being installed, operated and maintained by SolarCity. Unlike the typical solar panels Walmart is going with some new technology that utilizes what is called thin film solar panel design.

Walmart’s panels will also generate up to 22.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy per year—enough to power 1,750 homes annually—and avoid the production of over 11,650 metric tons of CO2 equivalent each year.

Why thin film? The one micron-thick semiconducters found on thin film solar panels are less energy-intensive to produce than crystalline silicon wafers. They’re light weight, work well in fog and smog, and lie completely flat, so they don’t interfere with skylights.

Source:Fast Company

And Walmart isn’t alone in this initative as more companies are looking into utilizing this technology.

image courtesy of Fast Company