Solar panel cleaning drone in development via Airobotics, Solar Drone

By Chris Crowell December 6, 2021 View Profile

Airobotics, an Israeli drone manufacturer, and Solar Drone, an Israeli company specializing in solar farms services, have signed a binding agreement under which Airobotics will develop and supply to Solar Drone with a unique solar panel cleaning drone system. The fully automated system will include a drone docking station for automatic battery replacement and cleaning fluid replenishment, enabling the system to operate continuously.

Solar panel cleaning will soon become a multi-billion-dollar market. Dirt, dust, mud and bird droppings greatly reduce solar panel efficiency, impacting power output. This means solar panels must be cleaned frequently, especially in dirty/dusty/bird-rich environments. Frequent cleaning is expensive and time consuming, especially when panels are remote, difficult to access or difficult to clean. Examples are floating solar farms (on water), rooftop panels and sun-tracking panels.

Airobotics and Solar Drone aim to leverage their expertise in drones and solar energy systems to create and market a new drone-based cleaning solution, forecasting sales of $10 million in the first three years in Israel, Europe, India and the UAE.

Meir Kliner, Airobotics CEO and Co-Founder: “”Our agreement with Solar Drone can leverage Airobotics’ advanced core technology to help monitor and maintain solar farms. This is another step for us into a multi-billion-dollar market”.

Shmuel Yanai, Solar Drone Founder: “Today’s solutions are unwieldy, uneconomical, and unable to cope with modern solar farms. We believe the entry of Airobotics’ drone technology into the market is a game changer, with significant economic potential.”

Have you checked out our YouTube page?

We have a ton video interviews and additional content on our YouTube page. Recently we debuted Power Forward! -- a collaboration with BayWa r.e. to discuss higher level industry topics as well as best practices / trends for running a solar business today.

Our longer running side project is The Pitch -- in which we have awkward discussions with solar manufacturers and suppliers about their new technology and ideas so that you don't have to. We've discusses everything from residential rail-less deck attaching and home solar financing to large-scale energy storage value stacking and utility-driven new home solar + storage microgrids.

We also post our Project of the Year announcements there! Interviews with this year's winners will be up starting the week of Nov. 8. Head there and subscribe today to stay on top of all this extra stuff.

Tags: Airobotics, drones, Solar Drone

Source: https://solarbuildermag.com/operations-maintenance/solar-panel-cleaning-drone-in-development-via-airobotics-solar-drone/