For utility scale solar farms, panels can stretch out over thousands of acres. Maintaining all those panels is a major job, precisely because if dirt and dust build up on panels, it can reduce the efficiency of the panel by up to 40 percent. It’s for that reason that solar panels require maintenance and cleaning.

One solution is human powered cleaning. Which is expensive and inefficient. It also can potentially damage delicate panels to have humans swinging cleaning equipment at them. The solution? Robots.

We’re seeing a plethora of startups specializing in robotic cleaning of solar panels making headway with customers. The Washington Post reports on Ecoppia, an Israeli startup  that just scored a deal to clean the over 18,000 panels at a solar farm in the Negev Desert. The robots clean at night, don’t require water, and do the job in under 60 minutes. Pretty impressive. Additionally the robots charge from solar and can hold enough charge for up to three days should a cloudy patch hit. Control of the robots can be remote, meaning theoretically you could have a solar robotic cleaning company clean and manage cleaning for solar farms around the world from one centralized center.

There are other competitors in this burgeoning marketing, including Serbot and Greenbotics, which Sunpower acquired. While I could see a standalone robotics company doing well, I think we’re equally likely to see an acquisition push by major utility scale developers so they can include the service as part of the engineering process. The robots are here.