Australia's solar boom faces industrial scale-up challenge

Australia is a global leader in adopting rooftop solar and household batteries, with energy sometimes offered for free during midday due to oversupply. However, achieving a full economic transformation hinges on deploying solar energy cheaply and at an industrial scale.

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Work is well underway to make sure that we achieve our goals in cell and module efficiency, which is a critical thing to unlock.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has set an ambitious "30-30-30" goal: solar panels with 30% efficiency, installed at 30 cents per watt by 2030. ARENA CEO Darren Miller emphasizes that while cell and module efficiency is progressing, accelerating large-scale, low-cost deployment is proving more difficult.

The cost of solar panels themselves is now a minor component of building a solar farm. The majority of expenses involve civil works, concrete pouring, pilings, steel, cables, and manual labor. To address this, ARENA is funding technologies like robotic installers, automated piling systems, and modular arrays to streamline construction.

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What's been harder is getting momentum in the deployment of solar at scale at very low costs.

Companies like Luminous Robotics are developing autonomous robots, named Lumis, to position and install solar panels without human intervention. This is crucial given the shortage of skilled labor, especially in remote areas. Robots can handle the heavy lifting and repetitive tasks in harsh conditions, allowing human workers to focus on quality control and complex tasks.

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The large majority of the cost structure is those heavy civil works, the pouring of concrete, the drilling of holes for pilings, the steel, the cables, and obviously the manual labour involved.

ARENA is also investing in drone technology for automated monitoring of large solar projects. These advancements aim to make solar farm construction more efficient, safer, and cost-effective, paving the way for wider adoption and new energy-intensive industries.

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They have these autonomous robots called Lumis that can move around a solar field and place modules in the right positions and then ultimately place those modules onto the racks without human intervention.