[post in search of an appropriate thread]
Story on Hacker News an hour ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30780455
Quote:
Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar farms
17 points by justicz 1 hour ago | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments
Hi HN! We are Banks Hunter and Max Justicz, founders of Charge Robotics. We make robots to automate the most labor-intensive parts of solar construction.
We just got back from our first demo on a 150MW solar construction site in Iowa, where we showed off our initial prototype: an autonomous forklift that unloads pallets of solar modules from a truck and stages them around the site. It’s a huge milestone for us, and we felt like now would be a good time to share what we’re working on more publicly. You can see a couple videos of our robot in action here:
Staging modules on the site in Iowa: https://youtu.be/Fwf4v8upuoI
Performing a two-pallet sliding and unloading operation in our warehouse: https://youtu.be/EOJiyMXpVeQ
As solar modules have become commoditized and prices have plummeted, solar has become the cheapest form of power generation in many regions. Demand has skyrocketed, and now the primary barrier to getting it installed is labor logistics and bandwidth...
Utility-scale solar farms (2MW+) are mechanically quite simple. They feature a steel racking system held to the ground by vertical posts ("piles"), and overwhelmingly (90%+) feature a single motorized axis to track the sun over the course of the day. Modules are then fastened to this axis with brackets.
We're using a two-part robotic system to build this racking structure...
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edit: So I watched the videos, they're both of the reach lift [operating as a drone?]
The shipping container sized assembler is not shown.
Quote:
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We're using a two-part robotic system to build this racking structure. First, a portable robotic factory placed on-site assembles sections of racking hardware and solar modules. This factory fits inside a shipping container. Robotic arms pick up solar modules from a stack and fasten them to a long metal tube (the "torque tube"). Second, autonomous delivery vehicles distribute these assembled sections into the field and fasten them in place onto target destination piles.
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Last edited by freebeard; 03-23-2022 at 03:17 PM..
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