QBotix Solbot R-225 robotic farm hand. Turns the solar panels as needed... (via QBotix)
Solar parks or PV farms are on the rise as more countries are adopting renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels. In order to generate a significant amount of energy, these installations tend to be on a massive scale. With that in mind, maintenance is often tedious and requires arrays to be precisely calibrated to track the position of the sun, which is often done through automation but sometimes requires a human hand. For engineers the process of recalibration is both costly and time consuming and can offset the cost savings of using solar power. To address these issues, QBotix has devised an automated system that employs a pair of full-time robots that perform most of the functions those engineers do in the field but at a reduced cost while working 24/7. Conventional solar arrays are typically situated on metal bracings connected to a concrete base, with an automated pulley system to orient the panels to track the sun. As the sun moves across the sky at roughly ten degrees every 40 minutes, those panels have to be adjusted and with large conventional automated system, this process has a tendency to falter on accuracy. This is where QBotix Solbots shine, as the pair of robotic maintenance workers are outfitted with sensors that pinpoint the sun’s position within an error margin of 1-degree and traverse the paneled area, providing adjustments to each panel every 45 minutes.
The company’s RTS (Robotic Tracking System) removes the individual motors and actuators needed for every panel and replaces them with a monorail-type track that is routed and positioned next to each panel. A pair of Solbot R-225 traverse the track and adjust each panel for optimum tracking of the sun as it arcs across the sky, which makes the system about 22-times more efficient over other automated systems, according to QBotix.. The robots have monitoring software that allow it to provide detailed data of the overall system, making it easy for engineers to get a detailed picture on system performance. The robots are incredibly robust with being both water and dust resistant and can operate in harsh environments. Solbots are also battery powered and capable of autonomously recharging themselves (using charging stations located on the track), which reduces the overall routine maintenance needed to keep them up and running. Each robot is capable of maintaining 340kW power on one system, which translates to about 1,200 individual solar panels, making it incredibly efficient over human workers. QBotix states that their RTS system gives alternative resource companies dealing in solar power the cost/effectiveness ratio to justify using renewable energies rather than fossil fuels. The only problem with using solar as a resource is that it is weather dependent, meaning it is only efficient when there is no sky overcast and the sun is shining. Otherwise, no matter how many solar panels there are on a massive PV farm, if there is no sun, there is no DC output, the system can’t justify the cost and those robots just might find themselves in the unemployment line.
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