Taranaki company's machine makes light work of building solar farms

Taranaki engineers working on a multimillion-dollar machine that is set to revolutionise the building of solar farms were initially kept in the dark about its true purpose – and thought it was to be used in horticulture.

And it would be easy to believe a newly unveiled four-wheel-drive prototype, with its two work platforms that raise up and down, and bright yellow roof to keep off the sun and rain, could be used to pick apples.

But Scott Walls, who with wife Hayley owns New Plymouth drilling and underground services specialist Drillco, said their game-changing machine would enable heavy solar panels to be installed in a fraction of the time currently required and with half the staff.

"We have invested multiple millions of dollars in developing and building the first four units," Walls said.

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"It has been a leap of faith but you have got to back yourself."

The Walls have created a renewables branch of their business, and said the automatic mobile platform (AMP) was designed to do the hardest parts of a job that usually required a lot of people doing heavy lifting and climbing ladders.

With patents pending, Walls was happy to reveal the AMP, which he said would allow a team of six or seven people to install 30 panels an hour.

Walls said he got the bug for renewable energy after working on the Waipipi wind farm near Waverley in 2019 and 2020, and had spent a lot of time researching the industry around the world.

"When you look at what is happening in the whole energy market, with the switch to electric vehicles, there is going to be a lot of demand," he said.

"There is not enough supply [in New Zealand]. That electricity has got to come from somewhere.

"We are not doing any more hydro dams. If you look at the past 15 years, we are well behind in investment in generation."

The prototype AMP took 18 months to develop and was made by a Taranaki company. It is being tested on a farm near New Plymouth, while the other three are being built.

Solar farms consist of lines of photovoltaic panels, each 1m x 2m and weighing more than 30kg, fixed to frames, which absorb energy from the sun to generate electricity for the national power grid.

Installation is normally hard, repetitive work, often in remote locations and working outside, so staff turnover is often high, the company's director of operations, Alan Bennett, said.

"You can imagine the repetition and the fatigue of that, people don't want to turn up for work," he said.

He expected the AMPs to make those jobs much more enjoyable.

There has been interest from overseas companies in the machines, which have been kept as simple as possible.

"All the other technology in the market is really complicated, with lots of electronics and moving parts," he said.

"We wanted a really simple, robust, low-tech system that does all the functions for a wide range of designs."

The company is rebranding its renewables division from December 7 and begins work on its first solar project in February, in the North Island.

Bennett said he was looking forward to seeing the AMPs in action.

"It has been a long time in development and we are very confident they are going to be our competitive advantage," he said.

This week, they have started work on a wind farm in Southland.

Next year, there are two more solar projects and another two wind farms as well.

"It is definitely stacking up," Bennett said.