Skilancer Solar, a clean-tech firm, has announced the release of an automated waterless robot for cleaning small-scale solar power plants on household rooftops. This innovation will complement their current offering, which includes an AI-powered waterless robot for cleaning large-scale industrial solar installations.
With the new robot, Skilancer hopes to target the residential sector. As there has been an increase in water scarcity issues at a global level, the need for an effective cleaning technology is vital not only to preserve water but also to promote the use of alternative energy.
Manish Das, Co-Founder and Director-Business, Skilancer Solar said “Solar panels are often portrayed as a magical means to bring the electricity bills down. In a way it is correct but only if they are kept clean every day. With the solar boom, people have shown aggressiveness to install small scale solar power plants on their residential roofs”
The cost of solar electricity is proportional to the solar panel’s power generating efficiency. Solar panels must be cleaned on a regular basis in order to maximise production efficiency. Traditional manual cleaning takes place every 15 days and is therefore ineffective. Skilancer’s self-cleaning robotic technology solves this problem by cleaning the panels on a daily or on-demand basis without requiring any significant human participation.
“If there is too much wear and tear, the wheels and brush can be replaced after 3-5 years,” said Neeraj Kumar, Co-Founder, Skilancer. The robot uses artificial intelligence to glide effortlessly across solar panel arrays, cleaning them and increasing their producing capacity. Users would no longer need to engage a team of people to clean their panels using distilled water or solar cleaning kits.
Fresh from recent investments by Venture Catalysts, Rajat Khare’s Boundary Holding, Alfa Ventures and others the company has been working on efficient automated systems that would further reduce the efforts and time spent on the maintenance of solar panels.
Skilancer Solar's robot is unique, which implies that, unlike previous robots, no additional railing or support structure is required. There is no reliance on labour because the robot is totally programmable and automated. The sensor-packed robot has a number of unique capabilities, including theft protection, self-diagnosis, malfunction alarms, weather alerts, and monitoring, among others.