Hey,

Charge Robotics' work looks pretty interesting and the solar farm construction industry is ripe for automation. Out of curiosity, what were the deciding factors to start with automating material handling? Would automating pile drive machines be easier and faster to market? Most of the work of the CFS pile driver machine is already built, The addition of a RTK corrected GPS and a GPR unit it could save quite a bit leg work and hassle with refusals.

I do see how the material handling with reach forks and telehandlers could apply to the broader construction market. Curious to hear your thoughts.

It is harder than you might think. Not all dirt adheres the same way. Dried bird dropping are significantly more resistant to abrasive cleaning than settled dust. On top of that the opacity is much more problematic for the cell as it creates a resistive hotspot.

Birds won't be flying around in a desert where they can't find water.

Maintenance problems exist with dams or for that matter with any power generation mechanism.

None of these are show stopper problems.

I agree module cleaning is not a showstopper, but it does have its challenges.

-Birds fly everywhere; can't hide from them. It can be hard to diagnose some of the problems they create.

"Robotic" cleaning is really not as common as the headlines make it seem. A couple of big projects have used them to target settled dust that can be removed without water. For most projects, the robotic systems don't pencil out and people default to paying a small crew every couple of months to go out and wash them.

Want to know something else that is fun about the concentrated thermal projects? If the sun is not available for long periods of time and the fluid cools down too much they have to dump energy into it to prevent it from solidify to point of overwhelming the pumps capacity!

Sounds like a good reason to keep that kind of generation in the desert, then. That's interesting, though. I suppose they could just divert some power generation to battery storage for those heaters though, just like nuclear reactors have backup generators for cooling.

Not necessarily obsolete, just uncompetitive. Many of the concentrated thermal systems can meet 30% efficiency but they usually are more of steel and plumbing projects than solar projects. On top of the high initial capital cost, they have higher maintenance as it is a system of high temperatures with moving parts.

That was exactly the meaning/claim - that because PV prices have fallen, it doesn't make sense to build new thermal plants.

All PV cells have a temperature coefficient that reduces their productivity in heat. some preform better than others. Thin-film is notable example. Placing large PV farms in the desert is mainly about two things: High insolation value and cheap land that is easy to build on. Many of the desert regions have very few cloudy days each year offering more available sunlight hours improving the annual production of the system. Second, land in the desert regions are orders of magnitude cheaper to buy than other areas. This drives down overall project cost and improves the IRR. In addition to the land being cheap, it hold little economic value for much else. If it can be used for generating power, then local authorities are often favorable when reviewing these projects.