Companies have found innovative ways to keep up with the growing demand for solar energy, finding faster, easier, and cheaper ways to build large solar farms. According to The New York Times, robots will transform how solar farms are built.
The driver of this innovation is the shortage of workers willing and able to build solar farms, a situation detailed by Forbes.
"We're seeing labor shortages on construction projects in the United States," AES Corporation CEO Andrés Gluski said, per the Times, "and it's a bottleneck to the build-out of solar farms."
Multiple solar companies have said it can be difficult to find qualified workers to build solar farms for various reasons, including the fact that many solar farms are in remote locations, some where workers have to contend with extreme heat, as the Times detailed.
Workers also have to be physically capable of lifting and installing hundreds of panels a day, each weighing 60 pounds or more.
On top of that, as of now, it takes anywhere from 12 to 18 months to build a large solar farm.
This is where the robots come in.
In July, AES Corporation introduced a first-of-its-kind robot called Maximo, which can carry around and install thousands of panels using artificial intelligence and computer vision to make sure the panels are installed properly, per the Times. Using Maximo, the process is twice as fast as it is with humans, and it costs half as much.
A San Francisco-based startup, Built Robotics, has developed a robot to help build the foundations for solar farms three times as fast as humans can alone, and it only requires two workers instead of the six or seven it would take without robot assistance.
How about a small mobile factory that uses robots to assemble solar panels right where they're going to be installed, then install them? That's exactly what Terabase Energy, a startup based in Berkeley, California, came up with. The company says that using the robots has made construction 25% faster, per the Times.
The use of robots to build solar farms is new, so there are going to be some bumps in the road, but that's to be expected.
"There's a learning curve, like with all new technologies," Gluski said.
All three technologies are already being put to use. Maximo will work on a massive project in California later this year, and if all goes well, AES plans to build hundreds of AI-powered robots of this type.
If these technologies can be used on a larger scale, it could not only make solar power more accessible but also cheaper, leading to less reliance on dirty energy that pollutes the air we breathe and contributes to the overheating of the planet.
The good news is that Gluski doesn't envision the new technology replacing the workforce.
"My idea is not to hire less people," Gluski said, "but to do twice as much with the same number of people."
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