South Africa’s biggest retailer now has enough solar panels to cover 24 soccer fields – with more coming

South Africa’s biggest retail group, Shoprite, has continued its rollout of rooftop solar in the country, and now has enough panels to collectively cover the equivalent of 24 soccer fields.

The group said that it is continuing to expand its rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) installations at various sites throughout the country, adding to the group’s growing network of solar-powered and renewable electricity installations in South Africa.

The group’s current installed capacity of solar PV generates almost 50 million kWh annually with 174,534 square metres of solar panels across 71 sites – the equivalent of 24 soccer fields.

“This is enough to power 4,554 households for a full year, easing pressure on the national electricity grid,” it said.

The group said that it is aiming to power 25% of its operations with renewables in the next five years and to meet emission reduction targets, including net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“Renewable energy enables our stores to reduce our environmental impact, and in some cases, continue operating during power cuts,” said Sanjeev Raghubir, Group Sustainability Manager.

Shoprite and other retailers in South Africa have been hit with massive costs due to load shedding, with the group recording over half a billion rands’ worth of cost related to diesel spend just to keep operations going.

Just in the last few months of 2022, two of the country’s largest supermarket groups – Shoprite and Pick n Pay – spent a combined R906 million on diesel for generators at stores, with Woolworths adding another R90 million –taking it up to a staggering R1 billion.

More recently, retail group Dis-Chem reported spending another R90 million on diesel – while The Foschini Group attributed a loss of R1 billion (including diesel costs and losses due to lost trading hours) to load shedding.

There has been wide push from retailers to mitigate these costs, including the rollout of solar in Shoprite’s case, and shifting operations to be less energy-intensive.

Groups have also been pushing the government to extend diesel tax exemptions, currently only applicable to businesses operating in food production, to other businesses in the value chain – such as retailers.

In the meantime, Shoprite said it will continue to roll out more solar panels as part of its own operational needs.

Some of the new sites and generated kWh for each site:

Source: businesstech.co.za