Solabot Technologies: Facilitating Groundbreaking Automation Solutions for Advanced Solar Technologies

Companies around the world have increased their use of robotic technologies. Implementing robotics technology in business operations enhances productivity and also ensures increased revenue gains and customer engagement. Understanding the need to provide advanced solutions for robotics technology, Solabot has established itself as a premium service provider for robotics cleaning solutions. The company also focuses on delivering services in the field of solar energy.

Brief Introduction to the Company

Solabot Technologies Pvt Ltd. is an advanced dry robotic cleaning solution company that aims to deliver premium quality services for solar panel systems. It specializes in robotic dry-cleaning solutions that significantly reduce the manual efforts required for wet cleaning and helps reduce operational costs. Over the years, Solabot has fortified its relationship with Solar industry leaders through the successful deployment of robotic cleaning solutions in commissioned and under-construction projects. The company takes pride in being one of the most recognized solar module cleaning system companies. Some of the well-known flagship products of the company are:

• Automatic Dry-Cleaning Robot 

This is a cleaning robot suitable for utility-scale solar power plants. It is fully automatic and programmable so that the user can set up a custom cleaning schedule.

• Semi-Automatic Dry-Cleaning Robot 

The semi-automatic dry-cleaning robot is for PV plants that are already commissioned. It offers the flexibility of both manual and automatic scheduling.

The Mission that Defines its Journey

Solabot's sole mission is to minimize losses by enhancing solar through dry robotic cleaning solutions, which ultimately not only increases the revenue for the solar power plants but also saves on precious water which was earlier used for cleaning solar modules. Huge quantities of water can be saved by used dry cleaning solutions provided by Solabot.

Solabot initially started as a startup and was working on experimenting with a small rooftop installed at the founder's residence. The organization has been working through many solutions, both wet and dry, looking at market potential, going through multiple iterations, and discussing with experienced industry professionals about issues regarding cleaning solar panels. This provided the company a solid ground to work on a robust and practical solution that could be released in the market to help the industry get better returns and save millions of liters of water with each project. After 2-3 years of reaching out to customers, showing reference projects, getting through the certification process, approvals from module manufacturers, the company is now having a robust pipeline which it captured during the pandemic, working closely with customers as there was a pause on construction activities on the ground from the solar companies.

Brains Behind the Entire Operation

Amit Aggarwal is the Founder and Director of Solabot Technologies. He is a serial entrepreneur and has established the successful business of Aggarwal Electro Wires Pvt. Ltd in 2007 which specializes as a cable manufacturer and is offering a comprehensive range of fiberglass cables, like PTFE cables. After handing over the business to the next generation, Amit has continuously monitored the Solar PV Industry from 2014 onwards and has worked on developing the dry robotic cleaning product; successfully developing and launching the product in early 2017. The initial phase of development and launch provided valuable feedback. While the robots were installed in actual PV Plants, the company re-worked the entire robot to make it robust and optimal, serving the purpose of cleaning the solar modules.

Serving the Robotics Industry and Clients

Dust remains a significant challenge for the solar industry at the operation and maintenance level, as dust accumulation on panels can significantly reduce the power production of those panels. Dust deposition is a critical challenge that will impact the economic viability of solar power in many regions if the deposition is not mitigated. Some international research papers report that the prospective market size of robotic cleaning by 2026 would cross US$1 billion. As the demand is increasing for the implementation of dry robotics cleaning, existing customers who were heavily relying on wet cleaning are slowly moving towards dry cleaning.

Dry cleaning helps daily cleaning of modules, and customers want to see trials of the same on their projects to assess the overall impact of dust on the solar modules, the generation gain, and ultimate revenue projections from the PV plant. The timing is correct as over sometime solar panel degrades and implementing dry robotic cleaning not only covers that loss by cleaning the modules but also provides an additional gain in the generation which ultimately leads to increased revenue generation.

Innovation that Distinguishes Solabot

Solabot remains at the forefront to understand all the requirements as per the latest market trends. Continuous engagement with IPPs, developers, EPCs, suppliers, understanding new and upcoming technologies, and keeping abreast of the market is what makes the company a prominent leader in dry robotic cleaning in the country. There is always interest from like-minded industry leaders to work in close partnership and association with Solabot. Solabot is currently working on multiple solutions to further optimize and lower the costs of robotic cleaning, and efforts are being made to make it more efficient with a new product launch regularly. The organization aims to maintain the USP of the overall offering and remain to be the most sought-after in cleaning solutions.

Challenges that Paved the Road to Success

Solabot initially faced major challenges in terms of competition with international players in the market; having no reference projects and a very small setup, the company was sometimes left out of the consideration of customers. Solabot started slowly building on offering trials to customers to provide them confidence. To stay afloat as a company, there were huge financial commitments because of continuous development on the products and also marketing them with no straightforward experience of the PV Industry left the company rethinking the strategy.

Persistence is something which the founder kept on his side and with full support from the family, he led this whole initiative of Solabot to success Well-wishers who work a lot in the background to help develop products, provide feedback, suggestions on new products, and upcoming trends in the market have allowed the company to gain the confidence to work in robotics and take a leading position in India. Solabot aims to reach the international markets by taking all the products.

The company slowly picked up the pace at the end of 2018 when it was introducing products. Some developers trusted and relied on Solabot and allowed it to nurture under their guidance to further improve and make the products more efficient by providing real-time ground feedback. Solabot worked through all the feedback and implemented them on the product and upgraded it which was successfully implemented on a mass scale in different parts of the country. 2019-20 was a slow year in terms of growth. Though surprisingly, during COVID, which is FY 2020-21, the company did multifold business with the customers. COVID provided a pause to the industry and the organization reaped benefits from the contacts and communications which it built over 2017/18/19 and accelerated the reach to customers, who could think clearly and order robots for trials and for mass implementation during the pandemic itself. Additionally, the company is setting up another manufacturing unit to cater to the demand and this gives the company a lot of confidence to move to other geographies.

The Success, Achievements, and Recognitions

Solabot has been recognized as one of the Top Solar Robotic Cleaning companies for the year 2020 by Mercom–a leading renewable energy magazine. Solabot has been recognized by another magazine as "Technology Innovation of the Year in Robotics in 2020."

Solabot has been winning repeat orders from the customers and slowly, it is taking a substantial share in the Indian market.

Solabot is trying to forge new assignments outside India and is currently working and developing partnerships especially in the Middle East and the US.

The Future of Robotics and Automation

Solabot foresees that the future trends will still be renewable energy and majorly focusing on solar power which could be pure grid-connected systems.  Going forward with energy storage as 24-hour power is something which the organization requires by managing the grid network to be independent and slowly move away from fossil fuels. Larger modules, more floating solar projects are another big shift which the company foresees is coming into play as land scarcity and permitting issues to allow developers to install projects incomparably less area in terms of covering module wattage with large modules. Robotic cleaning has picked up the pace and it ensures more thrust from authorities and bids. Following the trend of using dry cleaning will help developers remain more competitive while bidding, considering generation gains from such projects. This will further allow them to reduce tariffs and become more competitive all the time. Solabot has set up an advanced platform around IoT to cater preventive, predictive maintenance for the robots, enabling seamless services to be provided to the customer by closely analyzing and monitoring the performance of various components in the robots, their wear, and tear, and replacement timelines. These data points are very important for future analysis and would help improve the product efficiencies going forward.