Swedish flat-pack furniture giant IKEA will start selling residential solar panels at its stores in Britain, the first step in its plan to bring renewable energy to the mainstream market worldwide.
The company started selling solar panels made by China's Hanergy in its store in Southampton on Monday. It will sell them in the rest of Britain in coming months, it said.
"In the past few years the prices on solar panels have dropped, so it's a really good price now," IKEA Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard said. "It's the right time to go for the consumers."
Howard said IKEA aimed to launch the products in other countries eventually.
It picked Britain as its test market because it had the right combination of mid-level electricity prices and government-sponsored financial incentives that make investing in solar energy attractive to consumers.
"This is a market by market decision," he said.
The UK government offers private solar panel owners the opportunity to sell back electricity to the grid on days when they have surplus production and has a financing plan for solar power investments, which means residents can buy a system for no upfront cost and pay it off gradually.
