The Future of Solar Construction: Automation, AI, and Reaching Terawatt Scale | EP278 - Clean Power Hour

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Campbell (00:00):
So any sort of outdoor autonomy is uniquely

(00:02):
hard. I think, I think it'staken us longer than we would
have liked, and part of it isjust the challenges you face
with bringing this type oftechnology outside. But, but for
us, it's inevitable thateventually solar power plants
will be built with robots, andthat is so we can do 24 hours a
day, to build faster, to buildwith higher quality, to build
with lower cost, and to reallyachieve sort of the terawatt

(00:24):
scale. Hence the name of thecompany. We're trying to get to
the terawatt scale as anindustry, and you've got to do
that through software andautomation and AI. And so we
think that the market wants it.
The industry is ready for it.
We're just focused on solvingall the technical challenges to
bring it to scale.

intro (00:43):
Are you speeding the energy transition here at the
Clean Power Hour, our host, TimMontague, bring you the best in
solar, batteries and cleantechnologies every week. Want to
go deeper into decarbonization.
We do too. We're here to helpyou understand and command the
commercial, residential andutility, solar, wind and storage
industries. So let's get to ittogether. We can speed the

(01:04):
energy transition.

Tim Montague (01:09):
We're here in San Diego at inner solar, and it's
my great pleasure to have MattCampbell of Terrabase back on
the show. Welcome Matt. Thanksfor having me. How you doing?
Great man. We were just saying,it's been two years since Matt's
been on the show. And I wasasking, How long have you been
working on Terra fab?

About four years.
Yeah, yeah. So

if you don't know, Terra fab is a video going on
behind us, but it's a in thefield factory that semi
automates solar construction. Sowe're, we're always trying to
bring down the cost of solar.
This is a major thing in theindustry. I think the holy grail
for many people is a penny. Alot. If you can get Penny a watt

(01:51):
electricity from sunlight, youcan do a lot of cool things like
green hydrogen, right?
Absolutely, that's

the goal. Yeah,

so, but give us a cliff notes version of where
you've been on this journey forthe last four years with Terra
fab.

Yeah. So we, we've been hard at work scaling
Terra fab. So we've done aseries of projects. We're still
in the realm of pilot projects.
So we we did a great one inTexas last fall. We're gearing
up for our next two projects. Sothis year, the plan is to do
about 100 megawatts. So it'sstill small in the scheme of a
40 gigawatt market, but to getto 40 gigawatts, you got to

(02:34):
start with 100 megawatts. Sowe're excited. Yeah,

I heard from John Weaver, that we probably did
closer to 50 gigawatts in 2024Wow. So the market continues to
grow and surprise us. And youknow, there's, there's a couple
of things we're trying to bringdown the cost. We're always
trying to improve safety,reliability and but labor is a

(03:00):
major limiting factor. We onlyhave so many, whether that's
field labor or, you know,engineers, sales, people,
finance, all forms ofprofessionals in the industry
are in short supply, but, butfield labor is a tough one.
Yeah. And so if we can automateaspects of site construction,

(03:21):
that is going to be a goodthing. I have a dream, and that
is 24/7 solar construction withrobots. There's always going to
be humans involved in someaspects of construction, yes.
But if we can automate morepieces of it, I think that's
going to be good for theindustry. And of course, you
know, it's a national securitything, right? Being energy

(03:43):
independent, it has nationalsecurity elements, and it's,
it's just a good thing. Itcleaning the air, creating
yourself for a safer, healthierfuture for humanity. Yep. So
tell us, what are some of thechallenges that you're dealing
with and overcoming withterafab.

Yeah. So you know, the basic idea of terafab
is to achieve your vision. Ourvision. Same is the same, which
is automated 24/7 construction.
Now, if you look at the field ofautomation, generally, almost
all automation happens inside.
So it's in a car factory and iniPhone factory, whatever it is.

(04:23):
So the robots are living in areally friendly place, constant
lighting, constant temperature,no dust, concrete slab, and
we're trying to build stuff withrobots outside. Never been done
before. I mean, people are stilltrying to make cars that drive
themselves. So any sort ofoutdoor autonomy is uniquely
hard. I think, I think it'staken us longer than we would

(04:44):
have liked, and part of it isjust the challenges you face
with bringing this type oftechnology outside. But But for
us, it's inevitable thateventually solar power plants
will be built with robots, andthat is so we can do 24 hours a
day to build faster, to buildwith higher quality. Be to build
with lower cost and to reallyachieve sort of the terawatt
scale. Hence the name of thecompany. We're trying to get to

(05:06):
the terawatt scale as anindustry, and you've got to do
that through software andautomation and AI. And so we
think that the market wants it.
The industry is ready for it.
We're just focused on solvingall the technical challenges to
bring it to scale. I

will say I do notice a lot more robotic
solutions here this year thanlast year. It's a noticeable
uptick, and there are severalthat aren't here. I'm affiliated
with luminous out of Boston. Wewere just there at their launch
of the Lumi three. But AES alsohas a panel installing robot

(05:42):
that's not here. It looks like aZamboni. It's a weird thing.
They don't promote it very much,but it's in the field. It's
doing real projects. So yourapproach is quite unique,
though, right with this assemblyline in the field where modules
get attached by humans to thetorque tube and then, and the

(06:05):
robot is partially involved inthat, there is some automation
of that, and then taking thattorque tube out and mounting it
with another robot, right? Andthat's a heavy lift. That torque
tube weighs how much when it'sfully loaded, can

be up to 1000 pounds. Yeah. So, yeah, so,
yeah, no, I think you're right.
I think there's a lot moreactivity in automation now. I
think we've seen a bunch of newcompanies emerge in the last
year or two, which is great. Weapplaud all forms of automation.
And really, when you think aboutautomating solar construction,
at least the core of it, thestructure and the modules.

(06:42):
There's three ways you can doit. You can prefab off site. So
there's like a company, 5b inAustralia that does off site
prefab. We're doing on siteprefab. And so you bring the
factory to the field, you set upa Mobile Factory, you prefab
sections and install them, andthen you can do in the field,
robots like a luminous or AES orothers. We call that category

(07:05):
the mod bot, so roving modulerobots in the field, which is an
idea that's been tried for along time, and I think is a
worthy is a worthy approach. So,so, you know. So then the
question is, which approach isgoing to win of these three? Or
maybe it's not one size fitsall, maybe multiple approaches.
I think each one of them hasdistinct pros and cons. We've

(07:26):
studied all of them in depth. Weconcluded that mobile prefab was
a good way. But I love the modbot too, and it's healthy to
have a little, you know, try itfrom different approaches and
and then run into the challengesand, but at the end of the day,
it'll just come to throughput,quality, economics, capex, all
these kinds of things. Yeah,

yeah. And you mentioned full self driving. You
know, the electric vehicleindustry, especially, Tesla is
best known for this going afterfull self driving and, and Elon
Musk is kind of famous now forpromising an under, under
delivering on that promise.
Frankly, even I'm no longer aTesla owner, but friends of mine
are, and they're not, they'renot too psyched about full self

(08:12):
driving at the moment. Frankly,yeah, it's got, it's got quite a
few problems on the highway. Is,it's awesome, right? If you're
doing a long trip, it is prettycool, but in town, it's another
matter. And and that's quitetelling, because that's a very
controlled environment.
Relatively speaking, a solarfield isn't isn't crazy in terms

(08:34):
of the variety, but there'squite a bit of variety of
circumstances that a roboticvehicle, for example, is going
to interact with I'm curious.
What are your thoughts aboutthat, and how automated is the
wheeled vehicle

at this point?
Yeah, so we, we've alreadysuccessfully tested an automated
version of this vehicle, ourdelivery vehicle, and and we
will be scaling that up nextyear, it, in some ways, is
easier. In some ways, it'sharder. It's easier from the
standpoint of, I know whereeverything is. I've got, you
know, fenced environment. I cansomewhat control the

(09:13):
environment. But there are goingto be unique challenges, like,
if if it rains and it's muddyand there's, there's a big
puddle, a person would drivearound the puddle, but you know,
if you're following GPS routes,you're going to plow right
through it. Maybe that's okay,but, but, or maybe I need to to
navigate it right so. So I thinkthere are going to be a lot of

(09:34):
site specific challenges foranybody trying to automate
different types of vehicles andsolar construction, but they're
all solvable engineeringproblems. None of it is like
intrinsic like, there's no way Icould solve that problem, and
the speeds are low. So the thingthat Tesla has to deal with is
it's also like a highway iscompletely uncontrolled
environment, like, you know,there could be, you know, and

(09:56):
you're going 75 miles. An hour.
When you're going 10 miles anhour, I can stop in a meter,
right? So if there is aobstacle, you can, you know,
it's a lot easier than 75 milesan hour, sure.

So you said you're hoping to do 100 megawatts in
2025, and and congratulations.
That's, that's awesome. That's,that's a really impressive
number. Let's zoom out for a secin our last minute together and
talk about the big picture.
Obviously, Terrabase, it hassome other divisions. You've got

(10:31):
plant predict, you've gotconstruct and SCADA. What would
you like our listeners to knowabout the big picture?

Yeah. I mean, you know, the growth in all of those
products is fantastic. We'refortunate to have clients
amongst all the most of themajor EPCs and owners, so we're
really excited. One of thereally exciting thing has been
the scale up of our constructplatform, which is a sort of
digital construction managementsystem. And we've been
introducing all sorts of newcapabilities to track quality,

(11:01):
safety, productivity, creating acomprehensive digital twin. And
that, I think we're gettingclose to about 14 gigawatts of
projects with this software. Andso, you know, it's, I don't
think the industry has ever hadsuch a collection of of digital
experience with construction.
And if you want to improve it,you've got to understand what's
happening today. So things likequality. How do I improve

(11:21):
quality? Well, what are thesystematic defects that need to
be done better and addressedback in the design phase? So I
don't end up with the prod theproblem? So, so I think we're
really excited by all of it. Andof course, the big, you know,
growth in the future is with therobotics, but it's but the
robotics is really leveragingall the digital Foundation,

yeah, 14 gigawatts. That's That's
awesome. Yeah, yeah, that's fun.
I thought I was talking to CPS,they've deployed 10 gigawatts of
inverters, and I thought thatwas a big number, but, well,
thank you. Matt Campbell, CEOand founder of Terrabase, check
out all of our content atcleanpowerhour.com. Please give
us a rating and a review onApple and Spotify and follow us

(12:03):
on YouTube. With that, I'll say,let's grow solar and storage.
I'm Tim Montague. You.

All Episodes

The Future of Solar Construction: Automation, AI, and Reaching Terawatt Scale | EP278

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Future of Solar Construction: Automation, AI, and Reaching Terawatt Scale | EP278