China is building solar farms on a huge scale, and robots are helping put the panels in place. Mobile machines move along the rows, lift a panel and lower it onto its supporting frame. A heavy job repeated over and over becomes work for a robotic arm.
The appeal lies in all that repetition. Building a large solar farm means lifting, moving and carefully setting down panels thousands of times. Mobile robotic arms can take on that heavy work, while people organise construction and finish the job.
A robotic arm that moves with the construction work
The machines in the video run on tracks. Their arms are therefore not tied to one workstation: the base can move along the rows of panels. The arm then positions a wide panel above its support structure. This is a different job from the cleaning robots that travel over panels already installed.
Builder POWERCHINA describes how such a machine works at a project in Zimbabwe. It combines a tracked base, a movable arm and a vacuum gripper. Suction cups hold the panel while it is picked up, carried and positioned. That saves a crew from repeatedly carrying the panel by hand.
One concrete example is near Ruoqiang in Xinjiang, where an 8.5-gigawatt solar project is under construction. Robot maker Solar-LIT describes a trial at that site: a six-person crew installed 212 panels with the robot in 102 minutes. That is the result of one specific trial, but it shows why robot makers see opportunities at giant solar farms.
96 per cent less manual lifting in one trial
This goes beyond an impressive demonstration. At Fortescue’s Cloudbreak solar farm in Western Australia, LEAPTING installation robots were used to place 5,838 panels. According to the trial report on energy agency ARENA’s website, around 96 per cent of manual lifting was avoided.
That figure is about lifting, not a construction site without people. The report also identifies areas to improve: panel supply, robot speed and work inspections need to fit together. A fast arm is little use if there are no panels waiting for it.
Building on the scale of a power station
At the Al Ajban project near Abu Dhabi, a 1.5-gigawatt solar farm, POWERCHINA is also using robotic arms to install panels. That illustrates the appeal: at this scale, a small improvement per panel adds up to a great deal of work saved.
A robot does not have to do a backflip to impress. Sometimes simply putting a solar panel neatly in place is the trick—especially when the job keeps coming back all day.
