IKEA joins first of its kind renewable energy project

IKEA Adelaide will operate with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025.

Yep, all those lamps and lights and displays will be powered by clean energy in fewer than five years, as part of the IKEA Australia Clean Energy Transformation Project.

The roof of the IKEA Adelaide store will be converted to a solar energy farm of sorts, and it will power the store – and more.

And any excess energy will be fed placed back into the state power grid.

Funded by $1.95 million from the South Australian Government’s Renewable Technology Fund, the project is being run in conjunction with Planet Ark Power, SA Power Networks and Epic Energy.

The project is the first of its kind in Australia and will combine solar power and battery with microgrid management systems and Planet Ark Power’s voltage management system.

“These together allow IKEA to help SA Power Networks to manage the local network to improve the quality of power to nearby homes and businesses,” said South Australia Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan.

“The project will let IKEA significantly reduce its carbon footprint and make it easier for other companies to adopt low carbon technologies, and will combine innovative grid integration technology with 1.2MW of rooftop solar photovoltaics and a 3MWh (3.4MWh) CATL battery and is a significant project for the state.”

South Australia already leads the nation in clean energy uptake, with renewables accounting for more than 50 per cent of the electricity generated in the state.

When will the other states follow its lead?

6 comments

Sounds very much like a good idea. 

Common Qld. Govt. & Business Leaders. Get off your 'bums', & lead. 

It doesn't seem too hard & look at the benefits.

Wonder if projects like this will bring down the ridiculous prices Australians are paying for Energy, to their mostly Foreign suppliers?

Whist great to see private industry do this it is perhaps time for state govs and the feds to look to their own roofs to join in?

It would be even betetr if IKEA would stop using suppliers with underpaid and slave labour

So IKEA cons the SA Government out of $1.95 million to put solar panels on their roof.  If it was genuinly viable, IKEA would not have needed to leech off the Government for their "free" renewable energy.

I was in the local IKEA yesterday and noticed little posters here and there stating they are using their own solar panels to power the displays.  They apparently set this store up with a mostly self-supporting solar system back in 2014, the first I believe, so they have been doing this for quite some time.  They've been rolling the systems out to existing stores over the years, with all new stores being set up this way from the get-go.

Good on them.  Nice to see them taking this step. I couldn't find any mention of help from the Qld Government so don't know if they chipped in or not.  It will probably fall to corporate Australia to take up the challenge of climate change in this way as it becomes more and more viable for them to do so.   No use waiting for Governments, they are only interested in the next election.   

6 comments



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