“Epic moment”: Solar innovator 5B starts on high volume manufacturing line

Australian solar innovator 5B has begun construction of its Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Line (AMPL), a high-volume, scalable, and mostly automated manufacturing, assembly, and deployment process line for its rapidly deployable Maverick solar technology.

5B, based in Mascot, New South Wales, announced on its LinkedIn page on Tuesday that it had installed the “foundation bolt” of its AMPL – “the robotic equivalent of ‘turning the first sod’.”

Once operational, 5B expects the AMPL will be capable of producing a 50-70kW solar array every 30 minutes with minimal labour.

Backed by a $14 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the $33.4 million AMPL project is designed to fast-track the delivery of 5B’s Maverick solar arrays, which make solar installation incredibly easy.

Each Maverick system is a module, pre-fabricated, and pre-configured solar panel and racking solution that is shipped with the necessary concrete ballast in blocks each containing up to 90 540-550W solar panels. These blocks are then able to be unfolded onsite.

5B claimed a solar “speed record” in May of 2022 when two crews of 10 people deployed 22 Mavericks in a single day, ending the day with 1.1MW of solar power capacity.

The company this week wrote of an “epic moment” as it launched the new project.

“Hopefully, 50 years from now, this moment will be logged alongside Henry Ford’s mass manufacturing of cars, or Apple’s iPhone for standardising, simplifying, accelerating, and packing more value into the system itself,” it wrote.

5B has received significant attention and has attracted financial support from former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull and millionaire climate activist Simon Holmes à Court, as well as global oil & supermajor BP.