Retail & multi-site business

From rising energy bills to strategic advantage

Solar for retail isn’t just about cutting energy bills. It’s about taking control of one of your largest and least-managed cost lines.

Retail is energy-intensive in ways that are easy to underestimate. It’s not one large load in one location. It’s dozens or hundreds of sites drawing power around the clock for lighting, refrigeration, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning and IT.

Individually, each store looks manageable. Collectively, they represent a cost you’re largely absorbing rather than controlling.
The businesses gaining ground today have stopped managing energy site by site. Instead, they treat their estate as a single strategic asset.

The challenges facing multi-site retailers

Running energy across a distributed retail estate creates complexity that your grid operators will never solve for you.
Energy contracts negotiated site by site mean variable tariffs, capacity fees, and time-of-use charges that differ across your portfolio. Without central visibility, the gap between your energy strategy and your actual spend is rarely in your favour.

Refrigeration, HVAC, lighting, and IT do not pause between customers. Retail’s energy demand is high, steady, and spread across long trading hours, making it structurally difficult to reduce consumption when prices spike.

Meanwhile, customers, investors, and regulators are raising the bar on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) disclosure. Meeting RE100 commitments and CSRD reporting obligations requires auditable data, not good intentions.

Your estate is an untapped energy asset

Retail sites are, in many ways, ideal candidates for solar panels. Flat rooftops, car park canopies, and ground-mounted opportunities offer substantial surface area: often unshaded, structurally suitable, and currently generating no return. Solar PV for retail changes that.

Crucially, retail energy demand peaks during trading hours, precisely when solar generation is strongest. That natural alignment means you can use a large share of what you generate on-site in real time. As a result, you reduce grid dependency without relying solely on storage to make the economics work.

Also, procurement in multi-site retail is often managed centrally. A standardised solar installation across your portfolio is far easier to deploy, monitor, and report on than a site-by-site patchwork.

Energy solutions built for multi-site operators

Solar PV

Our solar energy systems for retail are custom-sized for your sites. They fit a single flagship store and a portfolio of distribution centres across multiple countries.

In-house PPA financing

Savings of up to 70% on electricity costs are achievable with a CapEx agreement, with return on investment from day one. For businesses where upfront capital is a barrier, our in-house Power Purchase Agreement offers a 10-to-25-year fixed-price arrangement at no upfront cost.

Tailored electricity tariffs

Tailored electricity tariffs and shared self-consumption arrangements replace the variable, site-by-site contracts that make multi-site energy procurement so difficult to control.

Battery storage

Battery storage lets you hold surplus solar energy and deploy it during peak-tariff hours, reducing demand charges and providing the on-site capacity headroom to roll out EV charging for customers and fleets. No need to wait for the grid operator to catch up.

Energy management software

Our energy management platform gives your central team real-time visibility into consumption, generation, and carbon performance across every site. And automated reporting makes ESG disclosure significantly less burdensome.

What changes when you take control?

The benefits compound across your estate:

Fixed-price energy supply for up to 25 years removes exposure to grid price volatility.
One single platform replaces a patchwork of local bills and disconnected data.
Budgeting is more reliable and long-term planning more credible.
Solar directly reduces your Scope 2 emissions and you can generate the auditable data you need for CSRD and RE100 reporting.
Visible installations – panels on rooftops, canopies in car parks, energy dashboard screens – communicate your commitment in a way that a policy document cannot.

If achieving lower, more predictable energy costs will improve margin across every site in your estate, you gain more than a competitive outcome. Visible installations communicate your commitment in a way that a policy document cannot.
You build trust with investors, loyalty with customers, and strengthen your position in an increasingly sustainability-driven procurement landscape.