The U.S. solar energy industry has succeeded in doing something that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago: It has officially built more than enough factories to meet the country’s demand for solar panels.
The nation can now produce nearly 52 gigawatts of solar panels each year, per a new tally from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That’s up from the 40 GW of capacity reported in late 2024. These numbers don’t count actual production, which is subject to factors like staffing and market demand, but rather what the industry is capable of. Current capacity exceeds the module component of SEIA’s goal from 2020, which was for the whole solar supply chain to hit 50 GW by 2030.
The factory buildout employs workers across the U.S. in high-tech manufacturing roles and diminishes reliance on China, the long-time leader in solar manufacturing. But solar panels, which industry insiders refer to as modules, are just the last step of the solar supply chain: Currently, U.S. factories assemble modules from solar cells that are almost exclusively produced overseas. Those cells, which convert sunlight into electricity, incorporate wafers that are meticulously sliced from silicon ingots; factories that make ingots, wafers, or cells are more complex and capital-intensive than module assembly plants.
Those precursor steps have lagged behind the U.S. module buildout, but companies have pledged to build factories for 56 GW of solar-cell capacity in the next few years, SEIA said. Those proposed projects, if they get built, would meet the needs of the newly revitalized U.S. solar-panel industry. But erecting solar-cell factories requires a step change in capital investment compared with module assembly.
In November, legacy solar manufacturer Suniva kicked off the first new domestic cell production since U.S. producers (Suniva included) succumbed to competition from China in the 2010s. ES Foundry launched pilot cell production at its South Carolina plant in January. The company plans to employ around 500 workers by this summer and ramp up to 3 GW of annual production capacity by the end of September.
Five more cell factories are under construction, per SEIA. They include QCells’ complex in north Georgia, which should bring 3.3 GW of cell production online later this year, and Silfab Solar’s 1 GW plant in South Carolina.
But President Donald Trump swiftly attacked his predecessor’s investments in clean energy, signing an order on his first day in office to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from the Biden administration’s landmark climate and infrastructure laws. That order targets grants, loans, and other appropriated funds and therefore does not seem to affect tax credits, Canary Media previously reported. But the move has sown confusion in clean-energy markets and could presage attempts to undo the legislation that created the tax credits.
Some companies are thus holding back on solar-cell factory investments until they see what the Trump administration does with a key manufacturing tax credit, which has proven vital to secure construction loans.
Cell factories require much bigger investment than panels
The rebirth of U.S. solar manufacturing had to start somewhere, and assembling panels made sense as that first step. Now, all those panel makers could become anchor customers for the next link in the chain — the proposed cell manufacturers. But making that jump isn’t so easy.
Take the case of Heliene, a company based in Ontario, Canada, that nonetheless has established its bona fides as a committed U.S. solar manufacturer.
Heliene opened a solar-module factory in Mountain Iron, Minnesota, back in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The company later expanded that facility to assemble 800 megawatts of panels per year with a staff of 320 workers. Another expansion is already underway to grow that workforce to 520 and capacity to 1.3 GW by April.
In November, when previously bankrupt Suniva began the first U.S. cell production in years, Heliene swooped in to purchase every cell Suniva’s new factory could make. Heliene could, for the time being, tout its products as the only U.S.-built modules filled with U.S.-built cells.
Now Heliene is working on its boldest move yet: a $200 million solar-cell factory to be built somewhere in the U.S. in partnership with India’s Premier Energies. But Heliene founder and CEO Martin Pochtaruk told Canary Media in January that he couldn’t make the final call on that plant given the uncertainty around what will happen to Biden-era tax credits under Trump.
