Costco Takes a 1.87 Million-Square-Foot Florida Depot Off the Grid Without Disclosing System Size
- Industrial & C&I Microgrids Microgrids News
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- Facility size: 1.87 million square feet
- Went off-grid: July 28, 2026
- Costco sites in Trinity's portfolio: Five, across four states
- Disclosed solar or battery capacity: None
Costco Wholesale cut its Port St. Lucie, Florida distribution center loose from the utility grid on July 28, 2026. Trinity Energy built the on-site system that replaced the grid connection. The depot covers 1.87 million square feet, and it now runs its lighting, refrigeration, HVAC and electric fleet charging from on-site solar and batteries.
Neither company published the size of that system. Trinity’s July 28 release describes a “fully integrated solar and battery platform” without a single kilowatt or kilowatt-hour figure. Three trade outlets covered the project over the following two weeks. None of them carried a capacity number either.
What Costco Says It Bought
Costco framed the project as grid relief rather than a backup upgrade. “By investing in this integrated on-site energy system, we strengthen the reliability of our Port St. Lucie facility while avoiding additional burden on the utility grid,” said Shay Reed, a certified energy manager at Costco.
Trinity argues the build beat the alternative on schedule. The company says the platform went in faster than a utility-supplied backup arrangement. Trinity adds that the work let Costco skip the interconnection queue and its permitting delays. The company also points to IRA tax credits for solar and storage, and to “substantial cost savings” it did not quantify.
Gonzalo Stabile, vice president of design and engineering at Trinity, tied the case to inventory risk. “For a distribution center of this scale, uninterrupted power is essential to maintain inventory integrity, logistics flow, and overall operational efficiency,” he said. JinkoSolar supplied the modules.
Five Sites, One Template
Port St. Lucie is the fifth Costco site Trinity has taken on. The others are a retail warehouse in Connecticut, two distribution centers in California, and one facility in Washington. That count matters more than any single project. A retailer repeating the same off-grid template across four states is testing whether large logistics buildings need a utility service at all.
Why It Matters
Interconnection queues now set the schedule for large commercial loads across much of the country. A distribution center that generates and stores its own power removes itself from that queue. It also stops competing with data centers for the same substation capacity. For Florida utilities, a 1.87 million-square-foot customer leaving the system is a revenue question and a load-forecast question at once.
For facility engineers, the missing numbers are the problem. Without solar capacity, battery energy and battery power ratings, nobody outside the two companies is able to test the 24/7 claim. Florida summer refrigeration load is the test that matters. Ask for those three figures before treating this as a repeatable model.
Critical Perspective
Trinity and Costco published a milestone without the three numbers that would let anyone check it. Solar capacity, battery energy and battery power ratings decide whether a 1.87 million-square-foot refrigerated depot rides through a Florida August night. Neither company said whether backup generation stays on site.
The five-site record invites the same question. Trinity lists a Connecticut warehouse, two California distribution centers, one Washington facility and Port St. Lucie. It has not published performance data from the four earlier builds. A template repeated five times without a published output figure is a sales record, not an engineering result.
There is a tariff question underneath the resilience story. Costco frames the project as easing grid burden. Florida utilities still recover fixed distribution costs from the customers who stay. A load this size leaving the system shifts those costs rather than removing them.
