“Future of solar”: Robots put finishing touches on large Victoria PV project

Engie has finished the third trial of robot helpers at its 250 megawatt (MW) Goorambat East solar project in Victoria, proving up what it says is the future of solar development in Australia. 

The final robot, a panel installer from US robotics company Luminous, was funded by a $4.9 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of its $100 million Solar ScaleUp Challenge.

Chinese company Leapting, which also ran a trial in July on the Goorambat East project, says its technology can replace a human team of up to four people and allow heavier panels to be installed.

But as the video below shows, humans are still needed for the details.

Goorambat East was a test bed for an auto-pile driver from Build Robotics, also funded by ARENA, and another panel installer from Leapting which was doing a concurrent trial at Neoen’s 350 MW Culcairn project in New South Wales.

The robot trials were driven by contractors Bouygues Construction Australia and Equans Solar & Storage Australia, but Engie hopes they will eventually bring down the cost of construction. 

“Each of the three robotic systems, Built Robotics, Leapting, and Luminous, were used for a different scope of work, so they aren’t directly comparable,” says Bouygues project director Bastien Sauvet.

“Built Robotics handled piling, while Leapting and Luminous focused on solar panel installation using different technologies. All three autonomous systems and trials met project expectations, achieving installation speeds comparable to manual teams after ramp-up and added benefits in quality and safety.”

All three trials provided insights in how the robots performed in the real world, although Sauvet would only say they identified challenges that will need to be dealt with.

“Notably, the Luminous robots demonstrated a high degree of flexibility and were able to operate effectively under a range of weather conditions. This suggests potential for use in scenarios where traditional installation methods might be limited by environmental factors,” he says.

The use of robots to build solar projects is hoped to bring down costs and make construction faster, which ultimately could lead to more solar being installed, said Engie’s Goorambat East site representative Justin Webb.

He says the Luminous trial demonstrated “the future of solar farm construction.”

The Goorambat East project is expected to start being energised – the process where energy can start being shared with the grid – by the end of this month with full energisation in mid-2026.

Luminous panel installer robot at the Goorambat East solar project. Image: Engie

Luminous and ARENA plan to share an open source dataset from the Goorambat East trial.

“We believe this is the honest approach to truly democratise solar for humanity,” said Luminous Robotics CEO Jay Wong in a statement.

“Such that this effort becomes the fuel on which innovative solutions, not just for panel installation and construction, but the holistic, collective industry can benefit from, in accelerating the planet into a future of true solar scale up.”

Automating the construction of solar projects is partly a cost measure, but also expected to make much bigger solar projects feasible by speeding up construction and reducing the number of people needed for outdoor work in hot, isolated and inhospitable areas. 

The Goorambat East project is tiny next to the extraordinarily huge solar proposals for the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

The likes of Sun Cable, Intercontinental Energy, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners are proposing multi-gigawatt (GW) projects to support hydrogen and ammonia production, and electricity exports in isolated desert areas.

Even if those mega-projects come to nothing, there’s an increasing number of 500-1000 GW projects in the later stages of development around the country. 

The largest of these is the state-approved 1.1 GW Upper Calliope solar project near Gladstone which will be one of the generators to replace Rio Tinto’s coal power needs in the area.

If you would like to join more than 26,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, please click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.