Mining companies in Australia are rapidly transitioning to renewable energy sources to achieve net-zero emissions. Australia’s desert regions have some of the highest solar energy, but heavy dust levels in these arid regions reduces the life expectancy and the efficiency of the panels.

Solar Energy Robotics (SER) are a specialist technology division of Innovative Energy Solutions (IES) providing Australian autonomous robotic products for the solar energy industry. The Autonomous Solar Cleaning Robot (ASCR) has been specially designed as a safer and more reliable solution to autonomously clean small solar arrays on remote mine sites in harsh arid environments.

​Solar Energy Robotics (SER)’s corporate mining client that are based in the Pilbara (the ‘client’), relies on their solar panel system to power the communication system managing the autonomous fleet of vehicles.

With dust being such a major issue in Northwest WA and even more so on mine sites, manual cleaning of the solar panels was required to keep the communications systems operating reliably to mitigate mine production losses.