The big-box giant mulls its next move in distributed energy.
by Julian Spector for Greentech Media
The leading corporate adopter of solar doesn’t hail from California, as might be expected, but from Bentonville, Arkansas.
Wal-Mart had 142 megawatts of installed photovoltaic capacity as of 2015 and is chasing a 100 percent renewable power goal. Now the company is starting to lay out a strategy for energy storage.
The company has deployed 17 energy storage projects, all in the state of California, including six 200-kilowatt/400-kilowatt-hour solar-tied batteries. These systems currently serve the company with time-of-use shifting and peak demand shaving, said Mark Vanderhelm, Wal-Mart’s vice president of energy, speaking to a crowd at the Energy Storage North America conference in San Diego last week.
There isn’t a specific timeline yet, but Vanderhelm said he is looking into future applications like frequency regulation, demand response, bidding into capacity markets, critical load backup power, and pairing with onsite generation for microgrid operation.
Vanderhelm envisions Wal-Mart stores becoming community hubs in the event of an emergency.
“We want to be a place to restart community after natural disaster,” he said. In an interview after the conference, Vanderhelm elaborated that “we don’t have a fixed commitment” in this regard, “but we’re thinking about it.”
The idea comes from previous events when Wal-Mart stores played a role in keeping community members safe in extreme weather events.
Since Wal-Mart stores already have massive amounts of solar generation installed on their roofs and in their parking lots, and some stores even have functional microgrids in place, batteries would complete the circle of self-reliance. Diesel generators can provide a cheaper source of backup, but they often fail and can’t work once the fuel runs out. Batteries could allow the solar system to disconnect from the grid and provide an additional source of clean backup power until the grid is restored.
