US Independent Power Producer (IPP) Silicon Ranch invested US$3 Million in autonomous robotics firm Swap Robotics. As part of this investment, Swap Robotics is welcoming Silicon Ranch cofounder and CEO Reagan Farr onto its board of directors. This article requires a premium subscriptionbasic (FREE) subscription

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Swap Robotics fully electric, autonomous lawn mowers align with Silicon Ranch’s subsidiary Regenerative Energy to restore soil health and enhance biodiversity on solar project sites.

Farr also added that, over the past few decades, the team has evaluated different alternatives to support the livestock grazing performed by its shepherds and the company-owned sheep.

After a successful pilot, we determined that Swap Robotics’ mission, operational model, as well as their strong leadership team, aligned well with our vision to innovatively scale a fully integrated program of agrivoltaics that can be deployed throughout our fleet from coast-to-coast,” said Farr.

The investment from Silicon Ranch follows previous significant backing from the Ontario, Canada based Swap Robotics. This included a US$3 Million from US solar tracker provider Array Technologies in Nov 2024. The funding was part Swap’s pre-Series A round, and could be followed by two additional tranches of US$1,000,000 tied to performance milestones. The company developed automated module installation solutions to reduce costs for ground-mounted project developers and Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPCs).

The company received an investment from US EPC contractor SOLV Energy in October 2022 as part of a jointly agreed agreement to explore robotics applications on utility-scale solar PV projects in the US. The collaboration was designed to accelerate the development of advanced autonomy technologies for solar operations.

Tennessee’s Silicon Ranch owns and operates 3.6GW solar PV. 3.7GW is under construction, and 12+GW of development pipeline are aimed at exceeding 10GW by 2030. AIP Management, a Danish fund manager, invested $500 million in the company to support its growth.

Microsoft signed an agreement with Silicon Ranch in February 2025 to deploy up 100MW of solar projects aimed at communities through its Clearloop platform. Silicon Ranch will own and operate these solar PV plants, primarily located in underserved areas of Arkansas and Louisiana. The first four solar PV projects will break ground in the next few months. Three of them are in Arkansas and one is in Louisiana.

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PV CellTech USA on 7-8 Oct 2025 will be our third PV CellTech Conference dedicated to the U.S. Manufacturing Sector. The events in 2023, 2024, and 2025 were sold out and 2025 will gather key stakeholders from PV manufacturing and equipment/materials, strategy and policy, capital equipment investment, and all interested downstream channels. The goal is to map PV manufacturing in the U.S. to 2030 and beyond.