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Digitimes Research: Automated robots help lower solar installation costs
Enoki Chen, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei [Thursday 20 September 2012]

In the past year, many large-size solar brands declared bankruptcy due to solar incentive cuts and high costs. Countries with high labor costs such as Germany have been developing automation products such as PV Kraftwerke's Momo and Gehrlicher Solar AG's Gehrlicher Assembly Robot to lower installation costs.

On the other hand, China-based Trina Solar has been cooperating with Solon Energy GmbH to develop solar modules that are easy to install. Their product aims to decrease the time and effort during the installation process. Despite that steps of the installation process can be automated or reduced, there are still many restrictions. With the development of the technology, the industry hopes to lower installation costs to improve the competitiveness of power generated using solar energy.

The two types of technology can be combined. Currently, one of the obstacles with automated installation robots is that the base of the panels still needs to be done manually. This obstacle can be removed if the modules already have a base set. The combined technology is likely to increase the efficiency of solar energy and help the industry grow demand.

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