California-based Terabase Energy is scaling up its automated solar construction platform and expanding its engineering software ecosystem to improve project delivery and performance modeling.

From pv magazine USA

California-based engineering and construction technology firm Terabase Energy says its new Terafab V2 automated solar array construction system has completed field testing and is ready for commercial service. The Terafab process solar panel and tracker torque tube assemblies onsite and deploys them on prepositioned tracker mounts using AI-assisted robotics.

In addition, Terafab has established a partnership with California-based energy consulting firm PowerUQ to integrate the latter’s uncertainty analysis software with the former’s PlantPredict solar modeling tools. The developments represent significant investments in solar plant technology at a time when new large-capacity power projects face shifting economic incentives.

The core of the upgraded Terafab factory system is an outdoor assembly and inspection center that is erected on active construction sites. The current version of the factory is optimized for First Solar Series 7 panels and Nextpower trackers.

Palleted panels are paired with steel tubes and in the field and run through an automated inspection line that performs quality control. Defects are caught in real time. Robotic arms load approved assemblies from the line onto unmanned rovers that drive them out to their appointed locations in the array field for manual placement.

Matt Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Terabase Energy told pv magazine USA that he has been working for ways to streamline solar construction since his days at SunPower a decade and a half ago. Earlier efforts involved prefabricating tracking module assemblies in the factory and shipping them to the site, but the weight and dimension limits imposed too many compromises on the process.

“We decided, ‘Hey, let’s do prefab, but we’re going to do it on-site because of the shipping density problem.’ But then we inherit these other problems,” Campbell said. “It’s hard to do outdoor robotics. Plus, we essentially take a factory assembly operation and set it up on site, where we have to fight through rain, hail, wind, tornadoes, dust, ants, bees, snakes, badgers, rats. Literally.”

Terabase’s research and development efforts have resulted in factory line that is hardened against the elements and nature’s creatures. Palleted modules and tracker frame components are shipped to the construction site. One robot unpacks them and moves module and torque tube assemblies through the inspection and loading point. Campbell says Terafab V2 has a two-minute cycle time that could ideally place 20 MW per week per line if running continuously. Campbell says there are two deployable factories available now with a third to be ready by the end of the year. He expects 10 factories to be available in the second quarter of 2027.

Terabase has used the first version of the Terafab system to install 40 MW of tracking solar over across multiple commercial projects in the U.S. With the addition of AI-assisted management software and automated robotics, the company expects to install hundreds more megawatts of solar in 2026.

“The new version is more compact than the original, so you can you can move it in four hours,” he said. “It’s pretty nimble and has a higher level of automation. The factory is twice as fast, and you can run multiple lines per site. My goal is to install a gigawatt in 10 weeks. The way you could do that is if we send four or five Terafabs to a site and run them 24 hours. We could do that.”

With the current version of the system, workers manually unload the panel-tube assemblies from the rovers and install them onto mounts, which have been pre-placed. Terabase says a future version of the system, due in 2027, will automate the process of fitting assemblies onto tracker mounts. Campbell said versions of Terafab capable of handling panels using silicon modules and other tracker components are forthcoming.

Terafab V2 was financed largely through a $130 million series C investment round led by Softbank last year. Campbell said the investment has enabled the company to pursue research and development on a number of initiatives designed to bring down the cost and time required to install large-scale solar.

“Well, the original goal of the company is in the name, ‘Terawatt Baseload Energy,’” Campbell said. “When we started the company, I asked, ‘What do we need for solar to be a terawatt-scale source of baseload energy?’ And the conclusion was, we need to be able to build it 10 times faster for half the cost.”

Another example of this investment in new technology can be found on the company’s engineering and analysis side of the business, with PlantPredict’s integration agreement with PowerUQ. The integration enables a solar productivity analysis in PlantPredict to be loaded into PowerUQ for an uncertainty quantification analysis to forecast plant performance over time taking additional factors into account.

David Spieldenner, director of PlantPredict sales at Terabase, told pv magazine USA that his company’s software represents an expansion of desktop photovoltaic analysis tools such as PVSyst by using cloud computing to enable more extensive analyses. Access to high-end computing enables PlantPredict to use parallel processing across many data centers to produce very granular results.

“We unlock the power of the cloud to do very advanced 3-D sub-hourly simulations,” he said.

Chetan Chaudhari, co-founder and CEO of PowerUQ, told pv magazine USA that while PlanPredict is a very high-fidelity, accurate physics model with its shading engine and different model chains that it considers while calculating energy production, its focus has mainly been on first year energy generation. Historically this has been worked, he added, because most of the plant value came from project’s tax credits and the high power purchase agreement rates it could command.

“But now that that’s kind of going away” Chaudhari said. “There are a lot more market pressures. We are seeing more news about the underperformance of these solar assets over their lifespans. This is the time for the industry to move away from just looking at the first-year generation and basing all the financial calculations on that. We need to be able to think about the project as a 20-year, 30-year asset that you’re investing billions of dollars in.”

The function of PowerUQ is to analyze factors that introduce variability into plant output models and evaluate the risks these impose on the project. Examples of such uncertainty are the performance of components over time, curtailment policies of utilities that dampen production, and the impact of El Niño weather events. A PowerUQ analysis of a PlantPredict model could show a range of probabilities for output scenarios and the risk levels associated with them.

“As we’re moving forward, we want to make sure people don’t get results that they don’t trust,” Spieldenner said. “PowerUQ is going to help people better understand the implications of the deeper results they are getting out of PlantPredict.”

Pacifico Energy Chief Operating Officer Kevin Pratt says projects such as the planned 7 GW GW Ranch microgrid in Texas highlight a shift toward private grids as developers seek faster, more reliable ways to meet surging power demand from data centers and industry.

From pv magazine USA

Electricity demand is here and climbing, and solar generation is being pressed on reliability and affordability like never before. Developers are looking at opportunities pragmatically and investing in generation to meet demand using the most cost-effective solution for the location. Solar is showing that it can still perform on its own merits.

Beyond the availability of fuel sources is the issue of interconnection and grid availability. Large-scale solar projects that pencil in terms of levelized cost of energy over the lifespan of the installation are running into scheduling issues involving grid interconnection queues that may be years long. Delays are not relegated to renewable energy. Developers looking to build combined-cycle gas-fired facilities are reporting similar wait times for delivery of suitable turbines.

Kevin Pratt, chief operation officer of developer Pacifico Energy, told pv magazine USA that the combination of increasing demand, grid interconnection queues and equipment supply chains are making off-grid, behind-the-meter generation on larger scales more attractive. Not all of this can be laid at the door of rising demand from data centers.

“The reason why we’re bullish on private grids, and microgrids generally, is because of the response we’ve seen in the market,” Pratt said. “Even before the big data center push that’s come along, we’ve had clients needing reliable power in a number of different scenarios. We decided that we needed to be forward thinking on this. So, you talk about chicken and egg. The demand wasn’t there yet, but we did think it was coming.”

Pratt cited customer requirements from about three years ago, where modest operations relatively speaking were not able to secure utility access to increased capacity. These included a business park in Southern California, a residential complex in Hawaii and aerospace company in Los Angeles that want to expand its existing operation.

Technologies have advanced to the point where a variety of generating sources such as solar, hydrogen fuel cells and linear generators – like those produced by Mainspring – are available for urban environments and non-attainment areas where environmental regulations and codes are very strict. Combined with storage, Pratt said, these options enable customers to circumvent a lot of permitting and interconnection queues by getting as much of their generation as they can handle behind the meter.

Microgrids no longer imply modest size, with new projects scaling up into the hundreds of megawatts and even gigawatt size. Pacifico is building its GW Ranch project in Pecos County, Texas, as a behind-the-meter generation facility for data centers specializing in artificial intelligence development. This project is building in phases, with 1 GW scheduled to be operational in 2028, and the full facility being online in 2030.

The primary generation sources for GW ranch will be simple-cycle gas turbines, which are not as efficient as combined-cycle turbines but access to natural gas is not an issue in that part of West Texas. Combined-cycle generators, which produce steam, also require more water and the GW Ranch project will not require access to off-site water. Moreover, as indicated previously, combined-cycle turbines are in high demand at present, with long wait times, and Pratt said Pacifico was lucky to have secured the generators earmarked for GW Ranch. 

The project will also incorporate 1.8 GW of on-site battery storage. But what about solar?

“For our big GW Ranch project, we do have in our design about a GW worth of solar on site as well,” Pratt said. “We’ve designed it. We’ve planned for it. Solar has kind of been our bread and butter, so that’s very natural to us. But we will leave it up to the customer. And ultimately, what’s driving decision making is speed: speed to reliable power.”

While some advocates view solar and fossil fuels as a zero-sum competition, consumers are more pragmatic. At the same time, renewable energy, particularly photovoltaic solar, has shown that it is not only effective in many applications, it is the only reliable source in many parts of the United States.

“Anything west of El Paso, gas is hard to come by,” Pratt said. “In California and Arizona there’s a lot of demand. In Arizona, they are reshoring manufacturing and bringing semiconductor manufacturing there. People want to put data centers there. They need off-grid power, but situation off grid is pretty challenging because they don’t have the gas availability.”

This is an opportunity for solar plus storage to shine in competition with other sources. For example, the recently announced Pioneer Clean Energy Center in Yuma County, Arizona, under development by BrightNight and Cordelio Power, will supply 300 MW of solar plus 1,200 MWh of storage to bolster local infrastructure for Arizona Public Service. While grid connected, the project demonstrates that large-scale solar remains competitively attractive.

According to Pratt, increasing electricity demand from manufacturers needing to scale up and the new generation of “hyperscale” data centers will make private microgrids and behind-the meter generation, whether paired with grid interconnection or not, more important in the U.S. energy landscape. Quoting a study from the National Center for Energy Analytics, Pratt hundreds of data centers each with power requirements in excess of 300 MW are being planned.

“You talk about the decision to go private grid or utility grid; that’s really the struggle I see,” he said. “It’s not simply generation. It’s how to get the power to where it’s needed. Those lines are overtaxed already. Massive upgrades are required in transmission and substations to deliver the electricity. And new transmission is really slow and hard to get. So, I think microgrids are going to be a big part of the solution going forward.”

Solar developers will have to make their case to customers needing more power that the demonstrable benefits of PV plus storage at the utility scale could be theirs without the need to jump through permitting hoops or wait on interminable interconnection queues. And no wait for gas turbines, either.