Solar

New domestic supply: SEG Solar opens Texas module plant

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New domestic supply: SEG Solar opens Texas module plant
(Credit: SEG Solar)

SEG Solar (SEG), a photovoltaic manufacturer, held a grand opening ceremony for its new PV manufacturing base in Houston, Texas, with the first 585W YUKON N series module rolling off the production line.

With a total investment of approximately $60 million and covering nearly 250,000 square feet, the production facility is now fully operational and specializes in producing high-efficiency N-type solar modules, with an annual capacity of 2GW.

The production lines are compatible with 182mm and 210mm N-type cells and are equipped with fully automated intelligent manufacturing systems. Additionally, the workshop will feature ERP and MES systems for management and traceability of incoming materials.

SEG anticipates establishing its global R&D center at the Houston PV manufacturing base before the end of 2024. The center will offer testing services, including LID tests, damp heat tests, PID tests, and light and LeTID tests. These tests are meant to ensure the reliability and performance of the modules under various environmental conditions.

“As a leading U.S. solar company, SEG is proud to be among the first to respond to the call for domestic manufacturing by constructing a solar module factory in the U.S. The completion of the Houston plant marks a significant milestone for SEG and a major advancement in U.S. module manufacturing technology,” said Jim Wood, CEO of SEG in his keynote speech. “Looking ahead, SEG will continue to deepen its investments in wafers, cells, and modules, closely tracking market trends to meet our customers’ needs. Through strategic collaborations across the supply chain, we aim to continuously optimize and enhance the U.S. PV manufacturing industry.”

Founded in 2016, SEG is a vertically integrated PV manufacturer headquartered in Houston, Texas. By the end of 2023, SEG had shipped over 5 GW of solar modules worldwide, the company said.

Other recent domestic content developments

SEG’s facility is the latest notch in the belt in a growing number of massive wins for our domestic solar supply chain. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) recently announced a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $1.45 billion to Qcells, an EPC service provider and one of the country’s largest (and only) PV manufacturers. 

Offered through LPO’s Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program, the loan guarantee will support a solar supply chain facility in Cartersville, Georgia, which will produce ingots, wafers, cells, and finished solar panels. First announced in January 2023, The facility will be the largest ingot and wafer plant ever built in the U.S. and will reestablish critical parts of the domestic solar supply chain by reshoring production capacity for components that are now mostly produced in China and Southeast Asia.

Qcells will make larger-format wafer sizes for both distributed and utility-scale projects that lower costs and increase product performance. Once fully operational, the facility is expected to produce 3.3 GW of solar panels per year, enough to supply panels to half a million American households. The Cartersville project is expected to create approximately 1,200 construction jobs and will support, upon completion, 1,950 local full-time operations jobs. According to a recent economic review provided by the Cartersville-Bartow County Department of Economic Development, this investment will indirectly create nearly 6,800 jobs in Georgia’s Bartow and Whitfield Counties and has a potential sales output of more than $2 billion.

Qcells’ other solar factory, opened in 2019, is located one hour north of the facility site in Dalton, Georgia. The experience gained from operating the Dalton facility, which was recently expanded to produce a total of 5.1 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels per year, will benefit this new project. Qcells expects to manufacture about 10,000 panels per year from the two facilities combined.

Last month, Heliene (a North American manufacturer of solar energy equipment) announced a joint venture with Premier Energies, India’s second-largest solar cell manufacturing company, that will result in the opening of a solar cell manufacturing facility in Minnesota. Under the terms of the agreement, the new facility will produce an annual aggregate capacity of 1 GW NTyp cells to supply Heliene’s U.S. cell requirement in addition to Premier’s.

Renewable energy infrastructure investor Excelsior Energy Capital previously partnered with Heliene to acquire 2.0 GW of photovoltaic modules, the majority of which are promised to be produced in the United States. The photovoltaic (PV) modules supplied under the agreement will be primarily produced at the existing Heliene manufacturing headquarters in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, and at a new factory leased in the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

In March of this year, solar cell manufacturer Suniva and Heliene announced a three-year strategic sourcing contract to produce the first “made in the U.S.A.” PV module eligible for domestic tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. Under the terms of the contract, Heliene will incorporate Suniva’s U.S.-made solar cells into its U.S.-made solar modules, with market availability beginning in mid-2024. Heliene’s modules portend to be the first crystalline solar modules with a U.S.-made solar cell.

The list of companies manufacturing PV domestically also includes Silfab Solar (factories in Washington state and Toronto, Canada), Mission Solar (Texas, but sources some raw materials from Asia), and First Solar (R&D in California, three factories in Ohio).