Whole Foods Market said Tuesday it will retrofit as many as 100 of its stores with rooftop solar panels.
Whole Foods has nine Connecticut stores, but it’s not clear yet how many will get rooftop panels, according to a spokesman for SolarCity, which is designing the systems for Whole Foods. The partnership also includes NRG.
Besides Connecticut, the company also said stores in New Jersey and New York will get solar panels.
Whole Foods said it expects the solar projects to propel it into the top 25 corporate solar users in the U.S. The current leader, as ranked by the Solar Energy Industries Association, is Walmart, which has 142 megawatts worth of solar panels on approximately 350 of its locations.
While some retailers have adopted solar faster, Whole Foods is no newcomer to renewables and energy efficiency. The company has more than 400 U.S. stores, two dozen of which already have solar panels, according to its 2015 annual report.
Whole Foods has had a fuel cell at its Glastonbury store since 2008. Its Fairfield store got a fuel cell in 2011. The power plants were made by South Windsor’s UTC Power, which later became ClearEdge Power and today is called Doosan Fuel Cell North America.
There are electric-vehicle charging stations at 60 Whole Foods stores. The company has also diverted 90 percent of landfill waste at 14 of its stores, and none have offered disposable plastic bags since 2008.
