Alion Energy resorts to Automation to reduce Solar Costs – seeks $25 million funds
Punjab follows lead of other states by auctioning Solar Power plants at low prices
June 21, 2013India's most powerful Renewable energy body stupidly plans giant Solar Plants of > 500 MW size
June 22, 2013Alion Energy, the California based company wants to reduce solar energy costs. Alion Energy was founded in 2008 and is an EPC 
and O&M solutions provider. Alion Inc. designs construction process for utility scale solar plants by using robotic installation technology, combined with the established construction industry practices. Alion Energy builds utility scale systems about 2x times faster and with half the labor. Alion Inc. now needs $25 million from investors for its expansion plans and to build machines.
Alion Energy also provides robotic cleaning and installation technology. The company believes that the automation process will reduce solar costs hence making it more affordable and at par with the fossil fuel costs. The initial cost of installing solar energy is still high; with the company’s automation process the costs can be reduced. Alion Inc. uses robots to construct and clean solar farms. 8 of the company’s available machines can build a 50 MW project in about 3 months time. The next technology will aim at doing the same job with just four machines. With the introduction of ROVER and SPOT robotic installation and cleaning technologies, Alion aims at building utility plants two times faster and with half the labor required. ROVER is the installation technology and SPOT is the cleaning technology.
Automating the process will lower costs and help make solar power more competitive with fossil fuels, Kingsley said.
“This is a natural evolution,” he said “When you get at scale, you’re always going to bring in automation. We’ve hit an inflection point where the automation has been in the factories, and it’s now time to take it out of the factory.”
“Solar’s portion of the energy pie is really small, and the reason is because it’s too expensive,” said Jesse Atkinson, Alion’s vice president of marketing and business development. “When we get to 6-cent power, or we get into the fives, then we’re competitive with natural gas.”
“Alion Energy has brought the speed, precision and efficiency of robotics into solar” said Mark Kingsley CEO of Alion Energy. Through using robotic installation and cleaning technologies we’ve eliminated flaws that plague the installation process. Now we canm build plants that are not only the most cost-effective solution within the solar mix, but have a roadmap to deliver solar electricity at costs that can compete with any generation source”.
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