At the beginning of February, photovoltaic (PV) solar cell producer ES Foundry, based in Greenwood, South Carolina, opened its new 400,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. The 70-foot-tall facility was previously run by Fujifilm to produce photograph-related products such as inkjet paper.
At the grand opening, local officials and industry leaders toured the plant and saw the cells being made in real time, as it had already started production in January. The plant’s opening comes on the heels of the company announcing its first multi-gigawatt, multi-year contract in January.
Alex Zhu, CEO, said: “Today, we are not just celebrating a factory—we are forging a path to a more sustainable, energy-secure future for America. Our advanced solar cells are engineered and manufactured right here in the United States, ensuring reliability, efficiency and the opportunity to maximize financial incentives for our partners.” The company’s ability to produce high volumes of solar cells domestically ensures that it will be a vital part of the American supply chain.
Photo Courtesy Kelly Pickerel
Onshoring its production offers a host of benefits. American manufacturing standards ensure that the products are environmentally friendly and high quality. In fact, with the company’s double-sided cells and Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact (PERC) technology, their efficiency rate has reached approximately 22.8% to 23.6%, outperforming EnergySage’s estimate of an industry average of 21.4%. They also perform better in, and have the ability to withstand, harsh conditions, thereby contributing to a more reliable energy source over longer lifetimes.
Producing in the U.S. and sourcing all the inputs there, including aluminum and silver pastes and a variety of chemicals and gases, also guarantees more efficient and timely deliveries to developers and enables them to take advantage of an additional 10% Investment Tax Credit by meeting domestic content requirements. Of the inputs, the only thing ES Foundry imports are the wafers, which are not currently being manufactured here.
Photo Courtesy Kelly Pickerel
Producing domestically provides good jobs for Americans. The company has already hired 125 people and predicts that it will provide about 500 local jobs by June. Some of these will be provided to former employees of Ascend Performance Materials, which manufactured nylon polymer and fiber for textiles and airbags in Greenwood County but announced in October that it would be closing that facility.
ES Foundry also expects to achieve shipment capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) in the third quarter. The facility will therefore be the biggest manufacturer of high-quality crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) solar cells in the country.
Additionally, the company is one of the first solar cell operations to get up and running in the U.S. A plethora of announcements have flooded in since 2022, but only Suniva has gotten up and running since then. It reopened a previously shuttered site in Norcross, Georgia last year and expanded its production to 1 GW. Even when a future second phase expands the facility to 2.5 GW, it will still be smaller than ES Foundry’s South Carolina facility.
Photo Courtesy ES Foundry
ES Foundry will also contribute to local, state, and national economic growth. In a report this past December, the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association laid out its expectations for the solar industry in South Carolina. By 2035, the organization expects solar production to increase from about 2,427 megawatts last year by a factor of four to reach about 11,047 megawatts. Accordingly, it expects 5,557 temporary construction-related jobs to be created annually until 2035 and 3,315 permanent jobs to be created overall by 2035, spurring $260.9 million in new labor income per year. It also predicts the solar industry’s impact on the economy to rise from $306.6 million today to almost $1.4 billion by 2035, with a cumulative impact of about $19 billion between 2024 and 2035.
Photo Courtesy ES Foundry
“To say that Greenwood, South Carolina was chosen to be the home of what will quickly become the largest U.S.-based pure play solar cell manufacturer is the ultimate testimony to the attractiveness of our community for investments in innovative and sustainable technologies,” said James Bateman, Economic Development Director of Greenwood County.
