Australian retail development giants Vicinity Centres and Stockland have been making solid progress on their shopping centre solar power initiatives.
Back in May, Vicinity Centres announced it would be investing $28 million in solar power system installations at five of its shopping centres across South Australia and Western Australia; the first stage of a two-stage rollout. On Monday, it said it would be ploughing another $50 million into commercial solar across an additional 17 shopping centres across the nation.
Stage one of its commercial solar rollout, currently in progress, involves 11.2MW and stage 2 will see 20.6MW of additional capacity, making for a grand total of 31.8MW.
Collectively these systems will generate approximately 48,547 MWh of electricity a year, enough to power 8,346 households.
In addition to the emissions reduction from these systems, commercial solar simply makes good business sense.
“As technology advances so does the business case for solar,” said Vicinity’s Justin Mills. “We anticipate strong investment returns with the project to generate an IRR of approximately 12%, while also reducing our consumption from the national electricity grid by up to 40%.”
Stage 2, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year, will also generate 300 jobs during construction and another 40 permanent positions across Australia once completed.
Stockland Merrylands Switches On
Vicinity isn’t the only Australian major shopping center developer/owner rolling out solar panels by the truckload.
In October last year, Stockland announced it was adding to its solar capacity and would be installing 39,000 solar panels on major shopping centres in three Australian states.
Last week, Stockland Merrylands (approx. 25 kilometres west of Sydney’s CBD), celebrated its “switch on” day.
Stockland says the $2.2 million rooftop solar power system consists of close to 3,000 panels and has a capacity of 1.128MW. The system is expected to generate around 1.57 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year.
“With more than 10 million customer visits to Stockland Merrylands each year, these new solar panels will help meet the centre’s power needs into future, particularly in the hot summer months,” said Craig Piper, Stockland Regional Retail Manager.
The company states that by June next year, Stockland will have invested $30 million in solar across 16 retail town centres, installing more than 45,000 panels. By that time, its total solar capacity will be 16.36 MW, which will generate around 23 GWh of clean electricity annually.
Australian businesses large and small can benefit from solar power – in fact, commercial solar for small businesses can pay back in under 3 years.
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