China’s Trina Solar, one of the world’s largest solar panel makers, has announced it will build a 5 gigawatt (GW) solar panel factory in Texas.
The factory will be in Wilmer, southeast of Dallas. The $200 million facility will be more than 1 million square feet in size and will create 1,500 local jobs. Trina Solar says it will source polysilicon, a key raw material in the solar supply chain, from the US and Europe. The factory will come online in 2024.
The Texas factory will produce Trina’s Vertex modules that incorporate 210mm silicon wafers that allow over 600W power output and up to 21.4% module efficiency.
“We have long had a vision to manufacture solar products in the United States, and we are proud of the jobs we are creating and the investment we are making in the Wilmer community,” said Steven Zhu, president of Trina Solar US. “Trina’s goal in building this facility is to begin to create an ecosystem of American manufacturing that can serve the burgeoning US solar market.”
Changzhou-headquartered Trina Solar, which was founded in 1997 and has shipped more than 150 GW of solar panels to more than 100 countries, was one of the Chinese solar companies determined by the US Department of Commerce (DOC) in August to be circumventing US tariffs by doing minor processing in Southeast Asian countries before shipping its solar products to the US. In January, Trina Solar announced it would open a factory in Vietnam in order to comply with US trade laws – and this huge US factory announcement is clearly in response to the US tariff slap on Trina’s panels after the DOC’s ruling.
(Disclosure: I just had Trina solar panels installed on my roof by Sunrun.)
Read more: Chinese solar firm to open a US factory – a manufacturing win for Biden
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