After years of teasing the residents of the Alamo City with rumors, Swedish-based furniture company IKEA finally opened a massive store in the San Antonio suburb of Live Oak this earlier this year. As San Antonians flocked to the store in droves, they were wowed by many of the super-sized aspects of the new retail location, including the vast selection of home goods, the spacious dining room/restaurant area, and even the sprawling warehouse shelves that practically require a map to navigate. Lost in all of this,though, is the fact that powering and cooling such a huge building requires a ton of energy. IKEA, never one to shy away from setting trends, invested in creating the second-largest solar array in the San Antonio area.
The system, which houses over 5,000 individual solar panels, came online on April 19, 2019 and can generate upwards of 1.72 megawatts of energy – more than enough to power the massive 245,000 square foot building below it. In addition to powering their own building, though, the IKEA array will also help put energy back on the grid, as they do not have batteries for energy storage at this time. That fact may turn out to be a huge boost to the CPS Energy power grid, as the array is capable of generating a ridiculously high amount of energy.
Across the entire CPS Energy service area, there are roughly 567 commercial solar customers producing energy, with a combined ability to generate 30 megawatts. Including residential installations, there are about 15,700 customers using solar in the CPS Energy service area. They had a generating capacity of 187 megawatts of power in 2018, up from 161 megawatts the year before. Clearly, the low cost of solar panel installation has served as an incentive for residents and businesses to convert to solar power.
If you’d like to see how much you could save on your commercial energy bill by switching to solar, contact the commercial solar experts at IES Solar! We’re happy to help you with a free quote, and can usually help significantly reduce your overall energy costs.
