A fleet of five autonomous pick-and-place robots will be used to speed up solar panel installation at two large-scale solar farms in Australia. 

Last year the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) introduced its AUD$100m Solar ScaleUp Challenge. The aim was to attract global companies and researchers to propose solutions for how to reduce the cost of large-scale solar farm deployment in Australia.

US-based Luminous Robotics is the first firm to receive AUD$4.9m funding as part of this challenge.

Founded in 2023 to help solve the challenge of building renewable energy infrastructure at speed, Luminous soon launched its first robot called LUMI. This autonomous pick-and-place robot was designed to construct, operate and decommission solar farms of all sizes.

Following an initial test at a solar site in Virginia, LUMI is currently in production on a solar site in New York.

The ARENA project will see the LUMI robots deployed outside of the US for the first time. 

A fleet of five will be deployed at two Australian solar farms: 440MW Neoen Culcairn solar farm in New South Wales and 250MW Engie Goorambat East solar farm in Victoria. 

The robots will autonomously pick and place solar modules onto racking structures. According to Luminous, the robots have the ability to install solar panels up to 3.5 times faster than a human workforce.

By removing the heavy lifting from the process, onsite workers will only need to secure the panels in place once they are on the racking structures.

ARENA foresees that the LUMI robots will reduce solar farm costs by up to 6.2%.

Darren Miller, ARENA’s CEO, said: “Solutions like LUMI are key to reducing costs and maintaining Australia’s leading role in the development and innovation of solar technologies. 

“The Solar ScaleUp Challenge brought together local and global thinkers, innovators and developers to collaborate and find innovative and groundbreaking solutions to transform the solar industry. This project is a great example of that ingenuity.”

Luminous will work with Equans, a global engineering, procurement and construction firm, to deploy the five LUMI robots at the two Australian solar farms.

Jay M Wong, Luminous founder and CEO, said: “Luminous was founded to make a massive global impact in one of the greatest problems of our generation – scaling energy infrastructure. We’re excited to be taking the first step towards this reality.

“Deploying our LUMI fleet in Australia will allow us to capture the data, performance insights and real-world impact needed to drive global adoption.”