Solar Cleaning Start-up Solavio Labs Gets Funding from Canadian Province

A Solavio Bot At Work

Solavio Labs, an Indian clean tech start-up innovating in the solar panel cleaning technology space has announced the completion of funding from Canadian Province – New Brunswick for Rs 40,60,000 taking their total fund raised to Rs 2 crores. This marks Solavio Labs as the only Indian start-up in the clean tech space to receive support from three Government bodies- India, Dubai and Canada in the last one year. With this fresh round of funding, the company also announced its expansion into the Middle East and North American Market. And, to support the growing global demand for PV technology, Solavio Labs also intends to scale its manufacturing base in India with the production of 12,000 units by end of the FY 21-22. The global solar cleaning market is expected to cross $ billion by 2026.

A Solavio Bot At Work

Commenting on the occasion, Suraj Mohan, Co-Founder – Solavio Labs said-“PV technology has been the core of our accelerated growth. Having secured orders from leading developers in India and Dubai, Solavio has witnessed phenomenal growth (125x) in the last one year. The recent funding by Canadian Province – New Brunswick via New Brunswick Innovation Fund is encouraging and we intend to expand our manufacturing facilities in the country to meet the global demand. The fourth generation technology we have will help meet efficiency of solar energy leading to increased green energy consumption and through this adding value to society in a meaningful manner. We will continue to innovate technology and play our part in strengthening India’s position in the global map.”

Started by two engineers, Solavio Labs is a Coimbatore based green tech start-up which continues to innovate and develop AI based solutions to enable autonomous solar panel cleaning. A key challenge faced by the sector is the settlement of dust and other impurities, which reduces the efficiency of the solar photovoltaic (PV) panels upto 40% and the corresponding ROI for Solar Plant owners. The existing cleaning facilities are heavily reliant on manual labour and other cleaning methodologies such as sprinkler systems, high pressure washers which come with their limitations in terms of costs, use of resources like water etc.

Suraj Mohan & Prashanth Goel, co-founders, Solavio Labs

Solavio Labs’ claims that its patented autonomous dry-cleaning solution for solar PV panels addressed these key areas of concern and is compatible with almost any solar panel, mounting structure, type (roof-top or ground mount) or climatic condition and is almost 30% lighter than most bots in the market. In addition to this, the firm claims that the dry-cleaning technology also saves over 200,000 Litres of water per Megawatt per year. With a proven track record of solving the critical efficiency challenges in the sector with the help of fourth industrial technology, the company recently entered into a long-term MoU with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA). As part of this MoU, the company has successfully commissioned its first set of autonomous solar panel cleaning bots to pilot at the 1.8MW Solar PV Carport located within the DEWA Head office campus. Further, Solavio Labs has also lined-up orders from tier-1 developers spread across the globe for 100 MW of Solar PV plants.

Previously, Indian start ups like Skilancer and  Nocco Robotics have also received funding for their solutions targeting the solar cleaning market, dominated by Israel’s Ecoppia, among other firms.