When Vincenc Šopík and his classmates started building solar power plants, they certainly did not plan to build a $400 million company called Christabel. Thanks to Christabel, they came up with another business idea that streamlines the maintenance of solar power plants. The $50 million startup Smaut not only helps Christabel, but also mows grass using autonomous mowers at several airports and for Austrian railways. They are also testing operations on plantations in South America.
Vincenc Šopík’s entrepreneurial journey began with a student job at a Czech company that built solar power plants. In 2009, the construction of solar power plants was just beginning to boom, so he and another classmate from the Czech Technical University tried their hand at site management, or construction coordination, not only in a Czech company, but later also in Slovak and German companies.
“The German investor we worked for suggested that we build power plants for him through our own company. So we took on a third partner from Brno University of Technology and founded Christabel in Bratislava to build solar power plants,” says Vincenc Šopík.
Within fifteen years, they managed to build a company with a hundred employees and a turnover of four hundred million crowns, operating in Czechia, Slovakia, and especially Germany, where it ranks among the ten largest in its field. The entrepreneurs from Jeseníky still don’t know where to turn first. “It was smooth organic growth,” says the entrepreneur, assessing the past years.
The owners of dozens of power plants gradually began to turn to them with requests for follow-up service, so in addition to construction, they also began to focus on maintenance in 2015. In the course of their work, however, they discovered a problem that led them to a much more interesting and innovative business idea. This ultimately led to the founding of Smaut in 2021.
“When operating solar power plants, it is absolutely essential to mow the grass under the panels, because if you don’t mow the grass in time, you immediately have energy losses. If you don’t mow the grass in time for a long time, the panels become blinded and permanently damaged,” explains Šopík, co-founder and head of research and development at Smaut.
Large tractors are clumsy and cause damage, while small and unprofessional equipment takes a lot of time. Power plant owners have even tried using sheep, but none of these methods have been effective. And so we come to a rarity and reality of today – under solar panels, people usually mow with motorized scythes, which is obviously inefficient because it requires not only sufficient human resources but also time, and therefore high costs.
“We had a problem finding someone who wanted to do it. So at first, I brought in friends from my native Jeseníky Mountains who didn’t have a job at the time,” notes Šopík.
And no wonder, because the work is really demanding. We are talking about power plants covering an area of ten to five hundred hectares and a total area of over 2,200 hectares, which is equivalent to the area of 3,000 football fields. Their output is about 2.5 GW, which corresponds to almost the total installed capacity of photovoltaic power plants in the whole of the Czech Republic.
“Our first job was a 30-hectare power plant, and a team of mowers mowed it for two months straight, and when they finally finished, it was already overgrown again. The guys were there for a long time and the work was demotivating,” says the entrepreneur, describing the biggest problem with solar power plant maintenance.
As a trained electrical engineer, Šopík understood that this was not the right approach. “I didn’t want us to repeatedly do heavy manual labor, and I didn’t want to hire more people either. So I looked for a way to automate the whole process,” he explains.
At first, they tried modifying smaller garden tractors, but they soon realized that they needed a more professional solution, so they integrated a professional remote-controlled platform. This was an intermediate step before their mowers became autonomous thanks to advanced technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
