US power generation group AES Corp announced the launch of Maximo, an AI-enabled robot designed to significantly speed up and reduce the cost of solar panel installation.
Maximo is described as the first proven solar installation robot on the market, capable of installing solar panels in half the time and at half the cost compared to traditional methods. “Maximo is the first proven solar installation robot on the market,” said AES president and CEO Andres Gluski. “We are facing unprecedented increases in demand, driven in large part by the rise of AI and data centres, and innovations like these will be fundamental for accelerating our ability to bring projects online faster and with greater efficiency.”
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The robot automates the heavy lifting involved in placing and attaching solar modules, having already installed nearly 10 MW of solar power. AES expects Maximo to install 100 MW by 2025 and assist in building up to 5 GW of its solar backlog and pipeline over the next three years.
Maximo will be deployed for the construction of AES's 2-GW Bellefield solar-plus-storage project in Kern County, California, which is under contract with Amazon.com Inc. The robot's first utility-scale deployment was at the Oak Ridge Solar project in Louisiana, also powering Amazon operations.
In 2021, AES introduced a similar solar installation robot named Atlas.
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