We have seen drones that run on solar energy.

We have witnessed drones doing the cleaning, inspection and monitoring on solar farms across the world.

But have you seen drones actually building these solar farms? Because they can do that now.

There are drones that are actually helping in the construction phase on the solar farms.

This is taking place in China, where heavy duty drones are helping construction workers with the erection of solar farms in the province in Yunnan in southwest China.

The solar power generation plants are under construction in steep hilly areas and before the drones were roped in, construction workers and to rely on animal as well as their own human power to physically haul the photovoltaic panels up the hills to the construction site.

“It is about 300 meters from the foot of the hill where materials are piled up for the PV project, located in Lufeng,” a report from Xinhua says.

“The PV power generation project is located on a steep mountainside with complex terrain, making it hard to conduct mechanical transport.”

According to Ma Shaozhen, project manager at the China Anneng Group, a construction company involved with one of the projects in the area, it took about 30 minutes for two workers to move and deliver an 8.5-meter piece of steel to the construction site.

The low efficiency seriously affected the project construction progress.

But with the drones now onboard, the whole transportation process, from binding materials by workers to lifting by drones and unloading, takes less than five minutes.

The drones have solved the issues of terrain difficulties and site inaccessibility due to poor road conditions and steep slopes, which also posed a high safety risk, and low labour efficiency.

These drones can carry payloads with a maximum lifting weight of 40kg and a maximum and have a flight range of 500 metres. Construction sites lauded the convenience brought by drone delivery, such as fast speed, simple operation, safety, and controllability.

Yunnan Province plans to build 50million kilowatts of solar and wind power projects during the next three years; and according to Yang Bin, general manager of Huadian (Lufeng) New Energy Development, drone technology is expected to greatly shorten the construction period of photovoltaic construction.