Planted Solar

Company Description

Planted Solar simplifies and accelerates the deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) power at scale by integrating advanced software and robotics into power plant design and construction.

This approach leverages comprehensive design tools, site planning, adaptable terrain following racking, and automated construction to reduce land competition and environmental impact — the result is 50% less land use than conventional systems and more options for developers to build the right capacity near interconnection. Planted Solar turns more sites into good sites, enabling rapid and efficient generation of carbon-free, abundant, and affordable energy.

New electricity demand now exceeds planned supply. The required timeline, cost, and carbon intensity of new, easily built capacity does not meet the world’s emerging needs. To achieve grid decarbonization and support the energy transition across various sectors — including mass electrification, battery electric vehicles, green hydrogen production, and AI — there must be a significant shift in the speed and scale of new energy generation, especially solar power deployment.

In 2023, a team of energy experts led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy, and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology concluded that 75 terawatts of PV are required to meet 2050 decarbonization goals. Today, just over 1.5 TW of PV capacity is installed, and interconnection challenges, site availability, and a shortage of skilled labor are growing barriers to further development.

The industry has grown by building custom construction projects and conforming large land parcels to the power plant. Future site availability will be defined by distributed parcels with more topography and distance between the interconnection points. This future demands a high volume but flexible manufacturing-like efficiency to deploy solar power that conforms to the land to meet the 75 TW moment. This requires a complete overhaul in design and deployment methods, designing for faster construction, reduced risks, and optimal use of interconnection resources.

Planted Solar is at the forefront of this transformation, leveraging abundant and cost-effective solar modules, high-density racking, and field automation to eliminate unnecessary balance-of-system components and complexity. This approach helps build solar power plants on half the land in half the time with lower risks and higher returns. Planted Solar offers:

Design and Development Services: Supporting projects from origination to permit, Planted Solar provides flexible designs that evolve from concept to construction-ready plans. Once configured, the software directly communicates these plans to assembly robots for field implementation.

Automated Logistics and Installation: Planted Solar automates logistics and power plant installation, delivering faster, safer, and less labor-intensive construction with the most adaptable solar racking solution.

Planted Solar has completed three pilot projects in the U.S. and will begin megawatt-scale distributed generation projects in 2024. By 2025, the company plans to expand operations to Europe and other target markets, supporting distributed generation, utility-scale, and Power-to-X applications.

Planted’s leadership team has extensive experience in solar product design (Cogenra/Maxeon), energy project development, and manufacturing automation (SpaceX), and Planted is backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Join Planted Solar in turning more sites into good sites and enabling rapid decarbonization with abundant, carbon-free energy.