Canadian Solar recently announced a partnership with IKEA Australia to build a 3.6 MW project that will span across seven IKEA sites located in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and generate enough clean energy to offset approximately 4,000 tons of CO2 annually.
This is the company’s largest commercial PV project roll-out to date globally, and emphasizes Canadian Solar’s position to provide their customers with total turn-key solar solutions that reduce the complexities and costs of solar PV installations.
Canadian Solar’s experience with large-scale rooftop installations across the globe; obtainment of the required permits; ability to provide optimized and cost-effective engineering, procurement and construction; and operation and maintenance services, also contributed to IKEA’s choice of Canadian Solar as their PV partner.
IKEA Australia Sustainability Manager Richard Wilson, commented, “We have a long-term approach to sustainability, globally our ambition is to switch to renewable energy to become energy independent by 2020, and we’re well on the way. For an installation of this size, installing solar systems on to the roofs of our stores and warehouses here in Australia is a considerable undertaking and each of our sites’ has had its challenges. It’s important to us and our business to ensure we have efficient, reliable high quality product together with a competitive offer, expert knowledge and experience.”
Canadian Solar’s professional engineering design contributed to the development of the project systems, which feature state-of-the-art products, such as the Quartech-Next Generation PV panels, micro-inverters, innovative roof-top ballast mounting structure and smart relay components.
“The IKEA project involved hefty undertakings of grid-connection negotiation,” says Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar. “Fully equipped with advanced understanding of Australian grid codes and backed by years of experience, our local team was able to effectively execute the projects, [despite their complexity].”
For more on Canadian Solar, try these articles:
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