Terabase Energy can look forward to a generous cash injection. The company wants to address the shortage of skilled workers in solar systems with a robotic solution.
Robots and autonomous vehicles are to build solar farms. (Picture: Europe’s largest bifacial solar park in Kozani, Greece) (Source: manufacturer)
- Terabase Energy has closed a $44 million funding round.
- A portion of the money comes from Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Ex-Microsoft boss Bill Gates and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos sit on the control panel here.
- Terabase Energy’s plan is to automate the construction of large solar parks with the help of robots. There are already first successes.
With Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, two of the richest people on earth are now supporting the idea of automatically building large solar systems. The power generation of the finished solar farms should be in the terawatt range (one trillion watts).
The highlight: On the site of the solar farm currently being built, robotic arms lift the solar panels, which can weigh up to 45 kilograms, onto automatic tracking systems. A job for which skilled workers were previously used. At a later date, autonomous vehicles will bring the assembled modules into place for anchoring.
Terabase Energy states that the robots can make a significant contribution to saving costs. Another benefit of this approach might be more important: speed. The solar parks that are so urgently needed can be put into operation much faster with the help of robots. In addition, although there are currently enough solar cells, there is a lack of specialist personnel to install them in rather inhospitable areas.
As the US portal Techcrunch writes, Terabase can already point to the first, smaller successes with the robot pop-up factory called Terafab. In a pilot project, a system with a yield of 10 megawatts was put into operation. It should continue on a grand scale in 2023. The financing should be secured for the time being with the cash injection from Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
Projects worth seeing are currently being created all over the world with the aim of achieving the climate targets that have been set. In Switzerland, a huge pumped-storage power plant is connected to the grid. An innovative solar pumped storage power plant went into operation in Portugal. But even on a smaller scale, it is worth considering solar generators for the terrace or balcony. We have tested the solar generator from Jackery for you.
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