When you have a big retail space, it makes a lot of sense on the surface to cover the whole roof in solar panels. After all, there’s space and generating renewable energy is a good thing. But even the largest stores can only cover around half of their electricity needs taking that approach. Even adding solar over the parking lot can only take you so far. On top of the space limitation, there’s the issue of efficiency. Putting energy back into the local grid is less efficient than larger utility-scale energy projects because most of the grid’s losses are near the end where the power is used.
