water-free robotic cleaning solution

China’s Sunpure will supply around 200 water-free robotic cleaning systems for Juniper Green Energy’s 107 MW solar project in Maharashtra.

Airtouch Solar Group has launched a cleaning solution for utility-scale solar PV plants to provide autonomous, water-free panel surface cleaning. The 4-meter cleaning unit weighs less than 40 kg and is commonly utilized in arid and dusty locations.

India-based Solavio has developed Eco Bot portable and shareable robotic cleaning solution that is compatible with both ground-mount and rooftop PV installations.

Israel-based Airtouch Solar has signed a $940,000 contract with Indian developer Hero Future Energies, three weeks after securing a $440,000 project with another developer in India. 

India’s Aegeus Technologies has developed an autonomous, water-free cleaning bot for rooftop solar installations. The bot weighs 5 kg (with battery) and can be operated remotely through a web-based app. It uses an air wash technology to clean the panels, ensuring no need for water or any harmful chemicals.

Wasteful use of water for solar panel cleaning is posing these areas to a high level of water risk. To justify its environment-friendly tag, the industry needs to replace manual cleaning with technologies providing water-efficient solutions.

Israel-based Ecoppia has partnered with SB Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., to deploy 2,000 robots across its five sites in the Bhadla Phase III and IV Solar Park Project in Rajasthan, India. This announcement follows its recent completion of large-scale deployments with ENGIE and Ostro Power (Actis Group) in the Bhadla park. pv magazine speaks to Ecoppia CEO Eran Meller about the project.

Ecoppia’s water-free robotic cleaning solution of PV power plant is the priority in the water-deficient area of Bhadla, Rajasthan. The Israel based company won all the tenders for water-less robotic cleaning technology issued by tier-1 players in 2017, cementing its dominance in India.

Ecoppia, CEO and co-founder, Eran Meller discusses with pv magazine the company’s latest E4 water-less robotic cleaning systems, which have been deployed in both India, and globally. He also speaks about the challenges Ecoppia faced working in India, in addition to operations and maintenance, and intelligent solutions for solar plants.