First Solar pours $330M into a new South Carolina solar factory

First Solar, the US’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has now announced the location of its new solar factory. The company says it will build a new facility in Gaffney, South Carolina, to handle the final production steps for its Series 6 Plus thin film modules. Those components are currently made by First Solar’s factories overseas, but once the South Carolina plant opens in the second half of 2026, they’ll be finished on US soil.

The company plans to invest approximately $330 million in the new site, which is expected to create more than 600 new jobs. First Solar says the average manufacturing salary will be $74,000 a year, roughly double the per capita income in Cherokee County.

When the facility comes online, it will add 3.7 gigawatts of new annual production capacity. That will push First Solar’s total US nameplate capacity to 17.7 GW in 2027.

Governor Henry McMaster (R-SC) celebrated the announcement, saying that “South Carolina is proud to be a destination for innovative energy companies that are powering our country with American technology.”

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The Gaffney plant represents an expansion of the company’s growing presence in South Carolina, which already includes a distribution center in Duncan and a partnership with the Inland Port of Greer.

Once the Gaffney site is up and running, it will join what’s already the largest solar manufacturing and R&D footprint in the Western Hemisphere. First Solar operates three vertically integrated factories in Ohio, as well as one each in Alabama and Louisiana, and has R&D centers in Ohio and California. By the end of 2026, the company expects to directly employ more than 5,500 people in the US.

By 2027, First Solar expects its operations to support more than 30,000 direct, indirect, and induced jobs nationwide, representing over $3 billion in labor income.

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