Companies have been finding innovative ways to make it faster, easier, and cheaper to build large solar farms to meet the growing demand for solar energy. According to The New York Times, robots will change the way solar farms are built.
This innovation is being driven by a shortage of workers willing and able to build solar farms, a situation detailed in Forbes magazine.
“There is a labor shortage for construction projects in the U.S.,” Andres Gurski, CEO of AES Corporation, told The New York Times. “This is creating a bottleneck for solar farm construction.”
Solar companies say finding qualified workers to build solar farms can be difficult for a variety of reasons, including the fact that many solar farms are located in remote areas, some of which require workers to contend with extreme heat, The New York Times detailed.
Workers also need to be physically strong enough to lift and install hundreds of panels a day, each weighing more than 60 pounds.
On top of that, currently it takes 12-18 months to build a large solar farm.
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This is where the robot comes in.
In July, AES Corporation unveiled Maximo, the first robot that uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to transport and install thousands of panels and ensure they're properly placed, twice as fast and at half the cost of doing it by a human, according to The New York Times.
San Francisco-based startup Built Robotics has developed a robot that can help lay foundations for solar power plants three times faster than humans alone, requiring just two workers instead of the six or seven needed without the robot's assistance.
What about tiny, mobile factories that use robots to assemble and install solar panels at their intended locations? That's exactly what Terrabase Energy, a Berkeley, California-based startup, has come up with. According to The New York Times, the company claims that its use of robots makes construction 25% faster.
Using robots to build a solar power plant is a new venture, so there will be some challenges, but that's to be expected.
“As with all new technology, there's a learning curve,” Gurski said.
These three technologies are already in use: Maximo will be working on a large project in California later this year, and if all goes well, AES plans to build hundreds of these types of AI-powered robots.
If we could use these technologies on a larger scale, solar power would not only be more accessible, but also cheaper, reducing our reliance on dirty energy that pollutes the air we breathe and contributes to overheating the planet.
The good news is that Gurski doesn't believe new technology will replace the workforce.
“My idea is not to have fewer people, but to do twice as much with the same number of people,” Gurski said.
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