Launch HN: Charge Robotics (YC S21) - Robots that build solar farms

Thanks! Great to hear from you (assuming I don't miss my guess from your username), hope everything's been going well for you. Looking forward to staying in touch as we make progress!

:) Fortunately there are way fewer biters.

We have a video with some drone shots of pallet unloading/staging here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9MLKmfmR30

We're operating as a subcontractor for existing large construction firms, where we come in and do the mechanical construction step.

In general robotics companies need to pick between "sell robots" or "operate robots as a service", and we've picked the latter model. Personally I think that throwing robots over the fence to a customer typically results in more headaches on both sides. Instead, we deliver mechanically assembled solar farms to construction companies, and they don't need to worry about how we got there - just that we did it quickly, efficiently, and spared them the staffing logistics.

Re:acquisition, we believe we can become a significantly profitable company operating independently. If we can become the best way of building solar, we'll be in a great position to sell services to all of the existing large solar construction companies.

Dane! Good to hear from you, and thanks!

Teleoperation is on our radar, especially for getting robots un-stuck when they are confused about a particular situation. Our vision is that a single remote operator can monitor an entire fleet of robots, stepping in to resolve confusing situations as necessary. We've seen this model deployed at other robotics companies like Third Wave Automation [1] and Teleo [2].

[1] https://www.thirdwave.ai/ [2] http://www.teleo.ai/

This is the real question

From my experience the biggest cost other than Panels and copper wire is the framing and structural infrastructure. Building codes, wind loads, etc. make it so its not as simple as propping up a few panels and plugging them in. It's significant and also cost inefficient in many ways.

Not really from what I’ve seen. There’s a rabbit hole of research reports, but the key chart is shown here: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/what-is-a-solar-farm-do-i-...

Maybe 10-15% of total cost depending on install type.

Reports are somewhat varied here but we find that about 10-20% of the overall site cost goes into labor. The bulk of the rest is component cost for solar modules and tracking systems, which are relatively commoditized and so are a thin margin above the cost of the raw materials to make them (silicon, steel). Those costs won't drop unless the underlying materials get cheaper.

We find that beyond the direct cost, the logistics of getting hundreds of people to a remote site is a significant challenge for construction companies. We directly saw how much of a hurdle this can be when we were on a site with the closest city an hour and a half away. Weather conditions are also a factor here, work on the site was actually shut down due to conditions that were too cold for laborers.

As we've interviewed solar construction companies, all of them have told us that they're turning down potential jobs just because they don't have enough people/capacity to build them. Unfortunately they can't simply raise their hourly rate by a few dollars to make this problem go away, because the challenges are more the regional specificity and logistical challenges of getting workers to sites.

I'm more interested in what kind of possibilities this unlocks. Sure, labor might not be a huge cost in projects at present moment. But that might be because all projects today are happening in places where labor is cheap. What if this unlocks projects in more remote and harsher terrains?

Mate, why don't you start something like this in NZ? We totally need more robotic startups IMO.

Years ago I 'worked' at Scott Technologies, around the time they were making this 'smart' straw making machine that had the chocolate/strawberry flavour inside the straw and you just put it in some milk and bam. Really cool going from planning to actually testing the robot (was for some client, can't remember who). I did this while on a high school placement programme in year 13.

I really love robotics, but I moved in a different direction after that!

We have some agricultural robot startups. Have a look around. I think the future of robots doing a lot of on-site moving-stuff-from-A-to-B and looking-at-things tasks in a lot of industries is coming now. It's technologically feasible and traditionally labor heavy work. NZ has mainly ag, so ag robots for us ;) It surely helps that farm labor is expensive and scarce here too. We don't have the luxury of under-the-table Mexican migrant workers.

I agree though that being in NZ seems to stunt you as an engineer. America appears to be overflowing with incredible companies that even normal people, not only "rockstars" can work at.

Absolutely. A couple that we're closely looking at:

Better documentation/data/insight into exactly what was built when, install rates, fuel consumption, and vehicle utilization during construction. Having our robots take a timestamped picture of every bolt that's installed is a significant win for construction companies in case any warranty issues come up after install. Currently there's not much visibility into exactly what was built where/when, so concrete data here will help significantly with scheduling/planning. We can actually generate a live updating map of the solar farm as it's being built.

Nighttime operation. Currently, all tasks on the site are performed during the day, so any amount of work we can shift to night time reduces site congestion. This actually can speed up the overall installation, as right now there's limited space between rows of panels, and multiple teams/vehicles trying to navigate through them simultaneously. We think of nighttime operation as analogous to parallelization as tasks that workers were waiting on can be performed asynchronously.

This definitely comes up. Some communities are more receptive to solar than others, and it is important that the local community buys into a project before it gets built. We've definitely passed by signs in the lawns of local residents unhappy about the project being built next door.

We are fortunate in that those sorts of problems are actually largely the responsibility of the solar project developer, whose job it is to finance the project, get land rights, do the appropriate environmental/interconnect studies, and build relationships with the community. The developer lets the construction company (and us) focus on building the project. But it's an excellent question.

"Also keep in mind Central CA in summer is not Massachusetts in November, weather makes all this 10x worse"

Important to keep in mind, but I would suspect(and hope), most solar farms will be installed, where it is sunny and dry.

Definitely, we've experienced workers being sent home for a number of reasons (too cold, too windy, too rainy, materials didn't show up as scheduled). Fortunately with an autonomous system there's no logistical overhead, if some external factor prevents us from working then we aren't stuck covering hundreds of per diems and sending everyone home. Yes, we'll have some equipment depreciation as it's not working, but it's at a similar rate to the rented or depreciating trucks/skid steers/telehandlers on existing sites when no one's working them.

Totally hear you on the CA vs MA weather swings (I've lived in both!). We actually see this as a key advantage for us. Sites we've visited in central CA have significant water distribution logistics, frequent shade breaks, and still have high heat exhaustion rates. Sites we've visited in northern climates report about 50% speed reduction in work due to gloves/cold, and will send workers home if the temperatures drop far enough. Our robots can handle both climates without an impact on installation rates (or any of the associated health risks for workers!).

I disagree that this is the same age-old problem. Automation in construction has failed more often than not in scenarios that require a high-level of engineering and/or exhibit complex tasking on-site. Your second listed article provides a good rationale for the failure of automation to infiltrate construction: mechanization. Many of the on-site build requirements for construction application are much more complicated and intricate than some of the motions required for agricultural automation. Furthermore, process design in construction is human-centric with a wide gap to transition to automation-centric design. This is well-outlined in your third article e.g. setup/tear-down costs, robot unfriendly environments, start-stop processes.

However, Charge Robotics has a problem that is generally free of much of the above hindrances and is employing a modular approach. Modular construction can lend itself very well to automation. See the modular housing boom that employs automation quite heavily.

One of the more complex construction portions of the build is handled by a portable factory:

"First, a portable robotic factory placed on-site assembles sections of racking hardware and solar modules. This factory fits inside a shipping container. Robotic arms pick up solar modules from a stack and fasten them to a long metal tube (the "torque tube")."

This process could also employ human labor as well. The rest of the build process requires a more simple transfer of these pre-built components with a final assembly:

"Second, autonomous delivery vehicles distribute these assembled sections into the field and fasten them in place onto target destination piles."

The locations of operation are large open fields with minimal occlusion (which often makes robots in many construction settings infeasible) and reuses prior equipment (bankability and minimizes setup/tear down costs).

I don't think this is an easy problem as there are significant technical engineering requirements, but if each modular process can be proven effective, then the external factors that prohibit automation adoption in construction outlined above are fairly minimal.

Cost optimized construction switched to large concrete elements in the sixties or so, so brick layers were obsoleted by that. Also a lot less concrete casting is needed.

Also bathrooms started arriving as ready made modules etc. The factories that make these, I assume they actually are quite automated?

It's a good question. When you look at why utility-scale solar construction isn't happening fast enough, you quickly find that there are fundamental scaling problems associated with getting hundreds of people to very remote construction sites every day for the duration of a project -- and these problems get worse as the sites get larger and more remote. While our robots will reduce the number of people required to build a given MW of solar capacity, increasing the labor supply will dramatically grow the number of solar installations happening overall each year, and with it create a lot of skilled construction jobs.

> My understanding is that solar installation is the next (semi?) skilled labor that could potentially be careers for many people.

This is partially true -- a lot of the more specialized solar jobs show up in the residential solar market, which is growing quite quickly (residential solar grew 30% in 2021 over 2020). The training period for the tasks we're performing on large-scale sites is a couple of days.

I would imagine this works best for large scale projects that are on nice flat land?

So plenty of room for humans to handle smaller/trickier projects. And of course to look after the machines that are doing the work.

Turning a blind eye to climate friendly tech for fear of losing (potential) future jobs doesn't seem wise, and it's irrelevant anyway in our capitalist society where someone else will just follow the money and step straight into your place.

Thanks Joe!

I agree. I read the title and immediately thought the pitch would make sense. Such repetitive nature like automation in farming. There will be edge cases though and they will be hard just like in farming.

Tracking solar systems can deliver 5-hours of generation. Solar and wind is for super cheap bulk energy. Solar is delivering the cheapest energy in history. Then we use a portfolio of other resources for balancing - grid interconnections; short and long-duration storage including pumped hydro; load flex; and bio-fuel, electro-fuel, and natural gas generators very occasionally.

Your intuition is right that storage is important for renewables -- fortunately grid scale batteries exist and are increasingly popular! At the end of 2020, 34% of solar projects under development were being co-located with battery storage in the US. [1]

If you're curious, Bloomberg has a nice summary [2] where they talk about how much more battery storage the world will need in a future that relies heavily on renewables (it's a lot -- see page 4 specifically).

[1] https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2021.04... [2] https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/NEO-Executive-...

A dollar spent on renewables is still better spent on generating capacity, most places, even if peak power is given away part of every day.

Storage cost is falling even faster than solar ever did, so waiting until next year gets you more storage for the price. Also, transmission to local storage is low-loss, so you don't strictly need to be responsible for both. Finally, demand for peak generation will only increase as synthesis (H2, NH3, etc.) capacity comes online. Stockpiled H2 and NH3 will prove entirely adequate as bulk storage despite their low round-trip efficiency, given just a few hours of a better alternative, and anyway that efficiency will only ever improve.

The main attraction of H2 and NH3 storage, despite current lossiness, is that the equipment can operate even after the tanks are full, because there will be unlimited demand for both, for a long time. That is, anytime you are not actually drawing down stored energy, the expensive synthesis equipment can be producing to sell, producing revenue. Similarly for liquified air (N2, really).

Single-axis tracked solar isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but we are going to have to adapt if and when the industry changes. We're building relatively generic robotic primitives that should be useful for many different types of system.

It seems like if the soil profile and ground is mapped correctly it could be a much easier operation than one may feel.

> Great to see fellow robotics starters on HN!

Yes! We are excited every time we see a robotics company show up on HN :)

> How are you connecting the solar modules, electrically?

Right now we are focused on nailing mechanical installation, and are leaving electrical installation to a separate team of subcontractors. That said, we do want to tackle this problem in the future, and have some ideas on how to make the make the electrical connectors on solar modules more suitable for robotic manipulation. The standard PV connectors today are comically bad for handling by robots, dangling loosely from wires on the back of the module.

> Also, I didn't see on your page anything about remote work. I understand why that might not be in the cards for robotics work, but is that the case for Charge?

There's enough hands-on work involving the robot that we aren't quite ready to bring on full-time remote workers yet. As we grow, this is something we will become more open to.