The United States is hopefully entering a solar module manufacturing renaissance, fingers crossed. After its domestic supply has been decimated by China’s precision solar build-out over the past decade, the manufacturing tax credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act should provide a lifeline for the market. As it stands today, U.S. solar panel manufacturing consists only of assembling modules in the crystalline silicon space, but the promised loans could rebuild the domestic supply chain and bring silicon ingot, wafer and cell production back home.
Now the hard work begins. With the various steps in module manufacturing taking years to build from scratch, industry insiders should be wary of new-name companies promising to cut the ribbon in the coming year. If all goes well, the United States should begin to hit its domestic production milestone by 2025.
Until then, Solar Power World has gathered information about companies already manufacturing modules in the United States and provides here a summary of their expansion plans related to the new IRA loans. This list contains only new houses that have earned the highest trust of our editorial team. Companies that have previously announced plans to set up US manufacturing (Ubiquity Solar in New York and NanoPV in Georgia, for example) were unable to provide official statements to Solar Power World about timelines, so we didn’t feel comfortable including them here.
Would you like to see a map and graph of this information? Check out our USA panel manufacturing page here.