Rooftop Solar Farms: Home Depot Finds New Use for Store Roofs

Not all Home Depot stores are exactly alike, but they each have one thing in common: they’re big. The average Home Depot is around 104,000 square feet in size – meaning there’s 104,000 square feet of empty space sitting on top of each one.

Today, the company announced a new use for 50 of its store rooftops: mini solar farms.

The project will reduce electricity grid demand by an estimated 30 to 35 percent annually at each Home Depot store – that’s the equivalent of powering 2,300 average U.S. homes for a year.

In partnership with Current, a subsidiary of GE, and Tesla, the company is utilizing Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) to lease its roof space and generate solar energy in five states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and the District of Colombia.

The rooftop solar project is part of the company’s efforts to utilize 135 megawatts (MW) of alternative and renewable energy by 2020.

Other alternative and renewable energy projects include:

Solar farms in Delaware and Massachusetts with a combined annual output of 14.5 million kilowatt hours (kWh)

Fuel cells in use at more than 170 stores and distribution centers that produce roughly 90 percent of the electricity each store needs to operate

The 50 MW Los Mirasoles Wind Farm northeast of McAllen, Texas, announced this January, and

The Zopiloapan Wind Farm located in central Mexico, added this June.

Learn more about sustainability at The Home Depot here.