The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced $4.9 million (USD 3.23 million) in funding for the local arm of United States-based robotics company Luminous to support the deployment and demonstration of a fleet of artificial intelligence-powered “pick and place” robots designed to streamline utility-scale solar construction.
Luminous said the LUMI robotics system tackles one of the biggest challenges in solar construction – installing panels at scale.
“We’re tackling one of the biggest challenges of our generation: building renewable energy infrastructure at unprecedented speed,” the company said. “Labour and logistics bottlenecks are slowing down the transition to a decarbonised future. Our vision is to commoditise harsh manual work by building and deploying embodied AI robotic systems for industrial environments, starting with large-scale solar construction.”
The company said the LUMI robot leverages tested, industrial components to install solar panels up to 3.5 times faster than existing labour practices, unlocking the potential to lower solar farm construction costs by up to 6.2%.
Luminous said the automated process has already demonstrated cost reductions on solar farms in the US but the ARENA project marks the first global deployment of a full fleet of five LUMI robots.
Image: Luminous
The company has partnered with engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Equans to deploy LUMI at the 250 MW Goorambat East Solar Farm being built by fellow French company Engie in Victoria, and Neoen’s 440 MW Culcairn Solar Farm that is currently going through the commissioning phase in New South Wales. The Culcairn project also trialled a solar module-mounting robot developed by Chinese company Leapting.
Luminous Chief Executive Officer Jay M Wong said the ARENA funding allows the company to showcase the future of solar construction in one of the world’s most advanced solar markets.
“With LUMI, we’re not just introducing a robot, we’re setting out to redefine the standard for how solar farms are built and help sites energise faster and safer,” he said.
“Deploying our LUMI fleet in Australia will allow us to capture the data, performance insights and real-world impact needed to drive global adoption – the kind of scale and transformation we founded Luminous to achieve.”
Luminous is the first recipient of funding as part of ARENA’s $100 million Solar ScaleUp Challenge, that sought to accelerate the pace of innovation in solar and position it as a core pillar of the energy transition.
ARENA Chief Executive Officer Darren Miller said the challenge is part of the body’s goal to reduce the installed cost of solar to just 30 cents per watt and reach a levelised cost of electricity under $20 per MWh by 2030.
“To achieve net zero, Australia will need immense amounts of solar power at ultra-low cost,” he said.
“We’ve already proven our ability to manufacture advanced technologies. It’s now time to apply that capability to solar PV, a cornerstone of the nation’s clean energy future.”
“Solutions like LUMI are key to reducing costs and maintaining Australia’s leading role in the development and innovation of solar technologies.”
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.