Solar panels help retailers tap into savings

Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre has 35-acres of flat roof area that’s wide open to all-day sun. For owner and operator Oxford Properties, there was no better place to install and test a massive, 20,000-square-foot solar array. Their mission? To generate enough green energy to power the mall’s one million square feet of retail space for at least 20 years, possibly longer.

To make it work, Oxford management hired Canadian engineering company RESCo Energy Inc. in the spring of 2017 to install 600 solar panels in clusters around the mall’s roof surfaces. If calculations were correct, the panels would achieve maximum power output in midsummer, just in time to offset the peak electrical draw needed to power the mall’s air conditioning.