IKEA Now Offers Home Solar Panels in Britain

Testing the market before expanding to other countries.

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IKEA is known for their innovative designs and business model, but it looks like they are a little late to the solar panel party. According to the Associated Press, the company recently began offering solar panels for homes at their Britain stores as a test market because "it has the right combination of mid-level electricity prices and government-sponsored financial incentives that make investing in solar energy attractive to consumers." The article also mentions that in the United States, retailers including Lowes and Home Depot have been dealing panels for a while now, but it doesn't say whether or not IKEA is the first store of its kind to do so in the UK. 

Solar paneling your home is not cheap (a package will run you cover $9,000), but over time homeowners generate enough energy to completely power their homes and there are initiatives that would allow them to sell the extra energy back to the grid (there are similar initiatives in place in parts of the United States). It will be interesting to see if IKEA can find a way to convince more people that solar paneling is the way to go. They do have their own success with the technology to point to as an example, generating an estimated $135million in revenue annually from the half million panels on their stores and several wind turbines.

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[via AP]

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