Made in the USA: Silfab Solar raises another $100M to scale its new South Carolina cell plant

Toronto, Ontario-based Silfab Solar, a photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturer, announced that it has closed on $100 million of new financing to scale its solar cell manufacturing plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

The plant is expected to have an initial annual capability of 1 GW of cell production and an additional 1.2 GW of PV solar module assembly.

The $50 million equity investment was led by funds advised by ARC Financial Corp. and includes investment from its existing co-investors. The company raised another $50 million in senior secured financing (a “green loan”) led by Breakwall Capital.

The green loan and equity financing are meant to increase the capacity of Silfab’s cell production and PV module manufacturing within its new facility in Fort Mill, South Carolina, as part of a larger effort to reshore solar manufacturing in the United States. The facility is scheduled to be operational by the end of this year, Silfab said.

“American-made clean energy is and will remain in huge demand,” said Paolo Maccario, Silfab president and CEO. “Silfab’s growing US footprint and increase in domestic content means more jobs for Americans and a lower carbon footprint compared to imported panels.”

Silfab manufactures back-contact and mono PERC PV modules for the North American residential and commercial markets. The company also has facilities in Toronto, Canada.

Silfab currently has opened two manufacturing plants in the U.S. so far, both in Washington, with one plant beginning a shut-down earlier this year. The company originally began shopping for U.S. manufacturing opportunities in 2018.

In 2021, Silfab doubled its manufacturing capacity in the U.S. with the launch of a new facility in Burlington, Washington. This was among the reasons the company eventually chose to shut down its facility in Bellingham, Washington – located only 24 miles from the newer Burlington location. Company officials said Silfab “outgrew” the footprint of its Bellingham facility.

In March 2023, Silfab announced it raised $125M to fund a new manufacturing plant, although it did not disclose the location at that time.

A domestic solar supply chain has been slowly strengthening in the U.S., but the viability of solar cell manufacturing in the United States is still up in the air.

The U.S. has plenty of places that assemble solar modules, but domestic production of components that comprise them is extremely limited. Only three companies are currently known to make polysilicon here- Hemlock in Michigan, Wacker in Tennessee, and REC Silicon in Washington, which produces materials for QCells. However, there are several intriguing U.S. facilities planned or already under construction that may ultimately prove we can make solar at home cost-effectively.

Canadian Solar opened a module plant in Mesquite, Texas last year, and is building a 5 GW solar cell facility to support it in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

In August, Heliene and India manufacturer Premier Energies announced plans to produce an annual capacity of 1 GW of n-Type cells at a plant near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Heliene currently sources solar cells from Premier’s Hyderabad facility for its module manufacturing operation in Mountain Iron, MN. Heliene is also partnering with NorSun, the only remaining ingot and wafer producer in the Western Hemisphere, on a 5 GW wafer factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma which is expected to open in 2026.

The only other known planned ingot and wafer site comes courtesy of Qcells in Cartersville, Georgia, set to be the first fully integrated silicon-based solar manufacturing facility built in the United States in more than a decade (and its largest ever). First announced in January 2023, the plant will make up to 3.3 GW annually of larger-format wafer sizes for distributed and utility-scale projects.

By the end of 2024, a US-made solar panel will still cost almost three times as much as one produced in China, according to BloombergNEF research. Without much of a manufacturing backbone, the United States can only compete with Asian imports by utilizing tariffs on imported goods and by incentivizing ones made at home.