Two Costco warehouses taken from aerial to a canopy drawn to scale on the real car park, then priced on Canyon's delivered cost base. These are preliminary and subject to site assessment, but they show the real shape and the real numbers, and the low cost per watt that comes with covering a car park this size.
Preliminary pricing, ex-GST, subject to site assessment. Base is the solar canopy structure supplied and installed; the turnkey figure adds a 5,000 kWh battery and 40 EV chargers. Full preliminary-pricing proposals are available for both sites.
Canyon Solar is Australia's leading modular solar canopy manufacturer. Founded in 2021 by mechanical engineer Will Beaumont, Canyon factory-builds 80% of every canopy at its Braemar, NSW facility, then crane-deploys the finished pods into live car parks. Every pod arrives with panels installed, waterproofing, lighting and EV-ready conduit as standard, backed by a 10-year structural warranty on a 30-year design life.
Retail is where Canyon has delivered. Six solar canopy projects delivered or in delivery for Woolworths, plus IGA, Wests Illawarra Leagues Club, AstraZeneca, CSIRO and AGL. Live retail car parks are the hardest environment in the business: customers keep arriving, and the doors never close. That delivery record is also why our analysis of what shade does to retail revenue is grounded in measured data rather than theory.
Thirteen sites carry large, uniform surface car parks suited to solar canopies; two remain under measurement. The format repeats almost identically across the country, which is exactly where factory-built canopies are strongest: one design, engineered once, rolled out state by state.
| Warehouse | State | Est. covered bays | Est. capacity | Indicative range | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casuarina | WA | ~826 | ~2.6 MWp | $5.9M to $7.2M | |
| Lake Macquarie | NSW | ~674 | ~2.1 MWp | $3.8M to $4.6M | |
| Marsden Park | NSW | ~635 | ~2.0 MWp | $3.5M to $4.3M | |
| Bundamba | QLD | ~635 | ~2.0 MWp | $3.8M to $4.7M | |
| Ardeer | VIC | ~629 | ~1.9 MWp | $3.7M to $4.5M | |
| Moorabbin | VIC | ~577 | ~1.8 MWp | $3.4M to $4.2M | |
| Kilburn | SA | ~565 | ~1.8 MWp | $3.5M to $4.3M | |
| Epping | VIC | ~542 | ~1.7 MWp | $3.2M to $4.0M | |
| Casula | NSW | ~481 | ~1.5 MWp | $2.7M to $3.3M | |
| Perth Airport | WA | ~468 | ~1.4 MWp | $3.4M to $4.2M | |
| Majura Park | ACT | ~371 | ~1.1 MWp | $2.2M to $2.7M | |
| North Lakes | QLD | ~329 | ~1.0 MWp | $2.1M to $2.6M | |
| Auburn | NSW | ~271 | ~0.8 MWp | $1.6M to $2.0M | |
| Portfolio | ~7,000 | ~21.7 MWp | $43M to $53M |
Coomera and Ringwood are excluded pending site measurement and format review. Figures are desktop estimates from aerial data, indicative only and subject to site assessment.
A solar canopy earns its keep four ways at once. The energy is only the first layer.
Layer 1: energy. Roughly 30 GWh a year across the portfolio, generated where it is consumed. Energy alone covers 77% of the portfolio service fee; energy plus EV covers 93%.
Layer 2: EV charging. Each canopy ships EV-ready. A standard block of eight 22 kW chargers per site earns charging revenue and positions each warehouse for the members who increasingly arrive in EVs.
Layer 3: the shade itself. Measured Australian retail data from stores with shaded car parks indicates a sales uplift of around 1.8%. This case applies 1% on a deliberately trimmed $200M per-store revenue estimate: $2M per warehouse per year.
Layer 4: the platform. The structure itself is infrastructure. It carries batteries for demand management, outdoor advertising panels at high-traffic store entrances, CCTV and security lighting across the whole car park, and headroom for EV expansion as the fleet grows. None of this is priced into the case; all of it rides on the same steel.
Also never counted: real estate asset value, hail and weather protection, customer dwell time. All figures indicative, ex-GST.
For a flagship site like a Costco warehouse, the standout option is Canyon's newest design, the Grand Canyon: a continuous, portal-frame canopy that covers every bay and every driving lane with a single, unbroken solar roof. There are no gaps over the circulation, which gives the highest solar density of any canopy in our range and makes the car park read as architecture rather than infrastructure.
A single roof across the whole car park. Patrons walk dry and vehicles stay shaded, with no exposed circulation between the rows.
Because the frame covers the driving lanes as well as the bays, it pushes the kWp per square metre above anything a wing-style canopy can reach.
Integrated LED lighting under a clean roofline, with battery and EV charging built in. It reads as a considered customer space rather than a utilitarian add-on.
| Own the asset (CAPEX) | Hardware as a service (OPEX) | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | $43M to $53M portfolio, staged by site | $0 |
| Structure | Costco owns the canopies outright | 10-year service agreement per site, 15-year option; funder-owned |
| The energy | All generation is Costco's | All generation is Costco's |
| Annual position | ~$7.2M/yr energy and EV value; payback in under 9 years on energy alone, far faster with shade value | ~$33M/yr total value against a ~$7.7M/yr fee |
| After the term | 30-year design life throughout | Extend, or acquire the asset within its 30-year design life |
| Balance sheet | On | Funder-owned asset |
Canyon facilitates the service structure through independent funding partners; buy direct, or pay from the savings. Either way the asset is engineered, factory-built and installed by the same team that has delivered 16 projects across three states.