Walmart Powers Up With Over 1GW of Solar

Walmart will expand distributed generation and community solar to more than 13,000 households in six states. The move will help bring more than 70 MW online across 26 projects and produce 160,000 MWh annually. 

Plans include 2 GW of community solar, allowing individual households to receive power from local solar farms by subscription. On-site solar and storage will total 1 GW, and another 77 MW of power will be added through direct agreements with utilities. 

Renewable energy powers about 47% of Walmart’s operations today, though the company aims to surpass half by 2025 and 100% by 2035. The company has over 600 on- and off-site projects in operation or underway in nearly a dozen countries. By 2030, it will add up to 10 GW, roughly matching the annual power consumption of 2 million households. 

Walmart’s rooftop solar panels. Image used courtesy of EDPR

Walmart will procure power from utility-scale projects totaling 842 MW across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Also, a 15-year agreement with EDP Renewables North America will enable Walmart to be the off-taker for 162 MW of solar power as part of a 180 MW project in Texas, powering over 27,000 homes. 

Distributed Solar Projects

Walmart intends to help bring at least 2 GW of community solar online by late 2030. Community solar typically consists of an off-site solar photovoltaic (PV) array with electricity moving through a meter to the grid. Subscribers, usually households or businesses, pay to receive a portion of the shared output rather than getting it directly from rooftop solar panels or other on-site systems. 

This distributed model is increasingly popular, with 6.5 GW of community solar installed nationwide in early 2024. Installations are small-scale, typically with less than 5 MW of capacity. 

How community solar works. Image used courtesy of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association

Walmart will help build 70 MW across 15 community solar sites headed by Colorado-based Pivot Energy and another seven projects from Illinois-based Reactivate, a division of Invenergy. The pair of deals enable tens of thousands of customers to receive power from the sites. 

Pivot’s projects are expected to be built in 2024 and 2025 and will serve more than 7,000 households. Walmart’s backing will support the sites’ construction, operation, and maintenance in five states: California, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland, and Delaware. 

Pivot already has a presence in some of these states, including on-site and community PV projects in Illinois and its home base in Colorado. Some of its projects maximize solar energy and agricultural production via agrivoltaics, in which drip irrigation is installed for crop production between solar panel rows, with extra spacing for animal grazing. 

Reactivate serves seven community solar projects totaling 14.4 MW, including six in Illinois and one in New York. These sites will serve 5,000 households and additional local nonprofits, businesses, and a school district. They’ll also help avoid 667,788 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetimes. 

Walmart Secures Utility-Scale Renewable Capacity

Walmart has built more than 2 GW of renewable energy projects between 2020 and 2023. According to Environmental Protection Agency statistics, the company consumes 5.3 TWh of clean energy annually, including about 1 TWh of solar. 

Walmart’s renewable power usage by resource. Image used courtesy of the EPA

Walmart has previously procured power from EDPR, including 233 MW of utility-scale solar and wind and 36 MW of distributed PV across 66 arrays. It’s an off-taker of EDPR’s Harvest Ridge and Bright Stalk wind farms in Illinois and Headwaters II wind site in Indiana.