The US has built so many solar farms that companies can’t find enough people to install panels. By 2033, the number of solar installers is expected to increase by 48%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Even if these workforce growth forecasts arise, the industry could still face a shortage of appropriately skilled professionals. The job is strict and unattractive – the fact that a significant portion of solar farms are in the desert.
“It’s awful work in remote areas,” James Emerick, co-founder and CEO of Cosmic Robotics, told TechCrunch. To reach out to people, Cosmic has developed a robotic assistant that can do heavy lifting on solar job sites.
Utility-scale solar panels can be incredible amounts up to 90 pounds. Workers must be caught in a rack several feet away from the ground for hours a day. Such efforts in extreme circumstances can quickly drain workers or worsen them.
These conditions are part of why Emerick and his colleagues started the universe. Startup robots will take part in the physical burden of their work and will be able to focus on tasks that require more dexterity and intelligence.
Cosmic recently raised a $4 million previous seed round, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The round was led by HCVC, Mac Ventures, and giant ventures with participation from several angel investors, including Azeem Azhar, Aarthi Ramamurthy and Nate Williams.
The startup robot is now an eight-wheeler vehicle topped with a metal slab containing a robot arm and a battery and a computer chip. A small trailer loaded with solar panels is towed and charged at the construction site depot when the day is over. The arms are equipped with solar panels and suction cups to lift the camera and sense the environment, but a high-precision GPS helps ensure that the vehicle is on the correct track.
“We see this as a force amp and we haven’t lost our job,” Emerick said. “It has a certain physicality, so bringing new tools opens up an opening so that more people can actually do this.”
Cosmic robots can place panels within a few millimeters of where they need them. The worker finds the robot and makes everything visible just before securing the panels to the rack.
The goal is to not only lighten the load, but speed things up. Emerick said Cosmic robots can split a standard crew into two, allowing them to double the amount of solar panels they can install in a day.
Currently, Cosmic robots, called Cosmic-1A, can install one panel every 30-40 seconds. This is roughly the same as the fastest human installer. However, robots don’t get too tired and can continue at that pace for a long time. Workers can still take their normal breaks, but there is not much downtime from fatigue.
By the end of the year, Cosmic plans to use the new funds to manufacture several robots and operate them in a production environment, Emerick said.
A mechanical pair of aid could be welcomed by data center developers who are rushing to ensure power supply in the face of surges in demand. Solar was already the winner in the race-to-power data center because it deploys quickly at a low cost. Adding automation to solar construction sites will increase solar even more.
“There are new things that are announced every day in data centers and energy generation,” Emerick said. “The speed of deployment is really important. You can’t build these things quickly enough, you can’t make computing online fast enough. That’s the key part, so there’s a reason why data centers are measured in megawatts rather than flops or anything.”
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