Australia’s solar industry has taken a significant step forward, with ENGIE completing the third robotic trial at its 250 megawatt (MW) Goorambat East Solar Farm in Victoria, cementing what the company describes as the “future of solar farm construction”.
The final trial involved a panel-installation robot developed by US-based Luminous Robotics, backed by an AU$4.9 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of its AU$100 million Solar ScaleUp Challenge.
Earlier trials at the site also included:
A piling installation robot from Built Robotics.
A panel installer from Chinese firm Leapting, which claimed its machine could replace a human crew of up to four and install heavier panels.
According to the contractors, Bouygues Construction Australia and Equans Solar & Storage Australia, all three robotic systems met the project’s expectations — achieving installation speeds comparable to human teams after ramp-up, along with added quality and safety benefits.
The site’s representative, Justin Webb, noted that the Luminous deployment demonstrated the “future of solar farm construction” and added that automating construction may reduce costs and accelerate build times — paving the way for more solar to be installed.
The Goorambat East project is expected to begin energisation — the process where electricity can start flowing into the grid — by the end of October 2025, with full energisation slated for mid-2026.
Luminous Robotics and ARENA also plan to release an open-source dataset from the trial, aiming to accelerate wider industry adoption of the robotic technology.
The initiative is essential on its own, but it also marks a bigger change: automation and robotics are increasingly becoming part of the construction toolkit for utility-scale solar, especially in remote or harsh terrain where workforce constraints and weather conditions make manual installation challenging.