Canadian Solar opened a solar cell factory in Indiana that the company says will help fill a major gap in U.S. solar manufacturing by producing a key component that is largely produced in Asia.
The U.S. is seeking to build a domestic solar supply chain through tax incentives and trade measures aimed at reducing dependence on imports. China controls about 80% of the global solar supply chain.
The nearly $1 billion investment by Canadian Solar's U.S. manufacturing arm, CS PowerTech, is expected to produce 6 gigawatts of cells annually and employ more than 1,200 people once it reaches full production by early next year.
"For us this is a tremendous milestone," Canadian Solar CEO Colin Parkin said in an interview.
Canadian Solar, which is based in Ontario, Canada, is one of the biggest solar equipment manufacturers in the world, with factories in China, Southeast Asia and the United States.
The Jeffersonville, Indiana, facility is the first U.S. plant designed to make heterojunction, or HJT, solar cells, a high-efficiency technology that Parkin said offers better performance than conventional technologies and has more room for future improvements.
The United States has added significant solar module assembly capacity since the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act created a tax credit for advanced clean energy manufacturing. But production of cells that are assembled into panels has lagged, leaving manufacturers dependent on imports.
Output from the Jeffersonville plant will be used by Canadian Solar's module factory in Mesquite, Texas, which is being expanded to 10 GW of annual capacity.
"It will directly reduce our reliance on imported cells," Parkin said, though the company will still depend on some imports.
U.S. tariffs on solar imports and manufacturing incentives helped justify the investment, Parkin said, adding that producing both cells and modules domestically allows the company to capture the full value of available tax incentives.
Like this news? Make BIC Magazine a Google preferred news source.
Canadian Solar is also actively evaluating investments further upstream in the solar supply chain, he said.
