As utility solar becomes increasingly competitive, companies seek gains in efficiency and production. Ecoppia and CEO Eran Meller are delivering just that with the market’s only automated cleaning solution – and the industry has noticed.
Several months ago a dust storm swept through Israel’s southern Arava Valley, depositing a fine layer of dust over utility solar parks owned by Arava Power – Israel’s original clean energy company – with O&M services from Siemens. The storm came through at about 10am, knocking production off just as daily production was nearing its peak.
As soon as the storm had passed, the sounds of Ecoppia’s E4 robotic fleet undocking from their berths could be heard up and down the site. Two hours later the modules were spotless and the production day continued, having regained what would have otherwise been a 30% loss in production efficiency.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better field demonstration of our technology,” says Eran Meller, CEO of Ecoppia. “The storm blew in suddenly from Saudi Arabia, bringing with it this thick wall of dust. Our cloud-based platform knew about the storm before Arava and Siemens – it deployed our E4 fleet and two hours later it was like the storm hadn’t happened. Another site just minutes down the road wasn’t equipped with the E4, so we had the luxury of comparison.” That site was nearly two days getting a cleaning crew and two weeks before they’d finished cleaning.
