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Re:A 100MW solar farm in Texas will mount panels directly on... by StillBored on Friday December 09, 2022 @06:25PM (#33927857)
Yah its probably a case that designing a vacmop style device (possibly purchased off the open market?) and having it drive around on a flat surface is both cheaper and keeps the panels cleaner than a custom bot that doesn't clean as frequently because it costs to much.

My question is whether sitting on the ground itself causes problems with efficiency due to the panels getting hotter than they would with some airflow under them.

Re:A 100MW solar farm in Texas will mount panels directly on... by pnw on Friday December 09, 2022 @07:26PM (#33928341)
According to the research on their site, ground mount solar has better heat dissipation than roof mount solar, and isn't that far behind racked systems, so it's not really a concern. The ground ends up acting as a heat sink.

https://www.erthos.com/modeling-heat-dissipation-in-earth-mo...

Re:A 100MW solar farm in Texas will mount panels directly on... by tuatoru on Friday December 09, 2022 @09:34PM (#33929227)
Erthos spend quite a bit of time designing their own autonomous cleaning and repair robot.