With energy prices rising, big box retailers are moving towards installing solar panels to offset the high cost. It makes a lot of sense, huge energy bill, massive flat roof, a setup begging for some solar panels.

The first to give it a try was retail giant Walmart, installing systems on a couple of stores. Staples put up a fairly good sized system at its New England distribution center.

Tiffany & Co. the jewelery company, has deployed 1.3 megawatts of solar energy at the company’s retail distribution centers in Whippany (680 kilowatts) and Parsippany (656 kilowatts). At a ceremony attended by New Jersey’s Office of Economic Growth, New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Tiffany celebrated the success of the project – designed, deployed and operated by PowerLight, a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation. Installed in the summer 2006, the solar panels generate enough energy during the day to power more than 1,300 New Jersey homes.

Kohls just rolled out plans to the immediately convert 24 of its 80 stores in California beginning in May, and within a year it plans to convert more than 75% of its department stores in the state. When completed, the solar installations, which will be set up and serviced by SunEdison, could generate close to 30 megawatts of power.

Not to be outdone Target has installed solar panels on the roofs of four of its California retail stores and plans to install similar systems at 14 more locations later this year. The solar-panel systems will generate about 20 percent of those stores’ annual energy requirements.

A Target store in Stockton, Calif. — about 60 miles east of San Francisco Bay — recently installed solar panels in five grids, spanning roughly 50,000 square feet, or about 40 percent of the rooftop. The 1,962 solar photovoltaic modules would be more than enough to cover an entire football field.

A system that size would cost an estimated $3 million to $5 million, said Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Los Gatos, Calif.-based Akeena Solar Inc., one of the nation’s leading designers and installers of solar-energy systems.

But a company like Target could see immediate economic benefits from using solar energy, Cinnamon said. When a company finances a solar project, the monthly energy savings often outweigh the monthly financing expenses. “It’s cheaper over the long term to put a solar-power system on your roof and generate your own electricity than it is to rent it forever from a utility.”

Even large companies that pay the full capital expense upfront generally see the solar-power systems pay for themselves in seven to 10 years in California, said Andrew Beebe, president of Pasadena, Calif.-based Energy Innovations Inc., which installed a multimillion-dollar system at Google Inc.’s corporate headquarters earlier this year.

Many companies are moving to solar energy in California, Beebe said, because the state’s rebate program, combined with federal tax credits, can cover 50 to 60 percent of the cost of installing a solar-power system. “It’s almost becoming a part of every major company’s corporate strategy,” he said. (via)

California has set up a system that makes it profitable for stores to go renewable, so *gasp* they are going renewable. Germany did the same thing and now leads the world in solar panel installation. These results prove that if you set up a system that makes renewable energy financially attractive people WILL install it. Currently our national system is set up to promote the burning of fossil fuels, so that’s what people do. If your average home owner offset 50-60% of the cost of their solar system and got a payback of 6-7 years, every house on the block would have solar panels on it.