Last year StorageMart entered into a partnership with JCM Capital of Toronto to install solar panels on the roofs of several of its self storage properties in the Great Toronto Area. That partnership turned a corner this week when the first fully completed installation, located at 221 Todd Baylis Blvd., was connected to the grid and began generating power.
The store on Todd Baylis is just the first of 14 StorageMart locations slated for solar panel installation under this initial partnership with JCM Capital. A second store, located at 1776 O’Connor Drive, should be connected to the grid by the end of next week and a third, at 605 Alden Road in Markham, Ontario, should be connected by the end of September.
StorageMart’s Future is Bright
All told, 10 of the 14 installations should be completed and connected to the power grid by the end of 2013, with the remaining 4 completed in early 2014. Once all 14 installations are completed and operable, they will have a combined capacity of 2,575 kW (kilowatts). This rating should produce approximately 3.5 GWh (gigawatt hours) of electricity per year. That level of production would be enough to fully power 350 homes for a full year.
What makes self storage facilities ideal for this type of project? “They are generally clean buildings with nice roofs that don’t have a lot of obstructions,” JCM Capital Vice President of Project Development Len Eberhard said. “They’re also generally owned by business savvy individuals willing to use their buildings for multiple purposes.”
StorageMart has long made a habit of taking already existing buildings and repurposing them for self storage facilities. This exercise in “recycling” buildings helps keep an already existing physical footprint from expanding any further and the installation of solar panels on rooftops will only further serve to reducing the overall footprint of StorageMart’s self storage facilities in the Greater Toronto Area.