After months of suspense, Canada headquartered solar PV manufacturer Canadian Solar has finally zeroed in on Mesquite, Texas as the location of its maiden US manufacturing facility with an annual module production capacity of 5 GW based on the tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cell technology.
Expected to cost over $250 million, the plant will roll out around 20,000 high efficiency modules a day. It is expected to create close to 1,500 skilled jobs once fully ramped up.
Canadian Solar says production is planned to begin around 2023-end. It already operates production facilities in China, Canada, Brazil, Thailand and Vietnam.
"Establishing this factory is a key milestone that will enable us to better serve our US customers with the most advanced technology in the industry. We hope that this is the first of many long-term investments we expect to make in the US as we think strategically about a sustainable and resilient clean energy supply chain," said Canadian Solar Founder and CEO Dr Shawn Qu.
It had earlier announced the company was actively exploring US solar market options for a manufacturing fab, spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act (see Canadian Solar Shipped 6 GW Solar Modules In Q3/2022).
Looks like more is to follow from Canadian Solar as the management had recently shared that it plans to go for backward integration for US manufacturing, starting with modules and follow up with cells or wafers (see CSIQ Shipped Over 6 GW Modules In Q1/2023).
Currently Canadian Solar, that trades on the NASDAQ as CSIQ, has a module capacity of 32.2 GW which it aims to expand to 36.7 GW by June 2023 and to 75 GW by March 2024 (see Gigantic Expansion Plans From Canadian Solar).
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