Solar4America initiatives to produce solar technology in California and South Carolina have precipitously shut down, the site in the latter state without ever opening.
In early 2022, SPI Energy Co. Ltd. began delighting advocates of U.S. domestic solar manufacturing at intervals by announcing initiatives to produce solar panels and cells in, respectively, California and South Carolina.
The sites were to host two of the biggest and most cutting-edge U.S. solar factories.
But in developments that pv magazine USA has uncovered, SPI’s panel-manufacturing plant in California has suddenly ceased operation and its cell-production site in South Carolina never got off the ground.
The company, which operates under the brand Solar4America in the U.S. market, has issued no public statement about either site, its top officers and corporate attorney have not answered requests for comment and no other media coverage has detailed the projects’ derailments.
Yet, two former Solar4America managers – its former vice president of sales and a former manager of operations – have confirmed the outlines of the two-site shutdown.
While Solar4America enjoyed robust sales of about 100 MW in 2023, the two former managers said, the company saw sales fall by half in 2024, and it began struggling to cover expenses for payroll, shipping and supply, they said.
The former Solar4America managers are Franz Feuerherdt, vice president of sales from September 2022 to this past January, and Cody Blevins, an operations manager from February 2022 to this past February.
Top executives were betting on domestically manufactured solar products quickly to become much more valuable and Solar4America thereafter to reach viability for an initial public offering (IPO), the former managers said. Though the Inflation Reduction Act began rewarding domestically produced solar in 2023, the boost was not enough to prevent production and therefore sales from becoming bumpy, they said.
“They who were hoping for some good things to happen,” Feuerherdt said.
SPI went public with its own stock offering at $15 in 2008 on the New York Stock Exchange, then switched to the Nasdaq Stock Market in 2016. Delisted from the Nasdaq on Jan. 15, 2025, shares recently have traded for less than two cents on the over-the-counter market.
SPI’s domestic-manufacturing solar projects first came to light in 2022, when the company announced it would take over a modest module-assembly line in the Sacramento, Calif., suburb of McLellan that bankrupt China Energy Co. Ltd. previously had operated.
Just a few months later, SPI said it would add 550 MW of production capacity to establish a total of up to 700 MW in 270,000 square feet of production, warehouse and office space. Because the site would operate some of the most up-to-date production tools in the country, Solar4America could market itself as one of the most cutting-edge and largest U.S. solar factories. The new line in McLellan was to produce 410 watt, 108-cell panels and 550 watt, 144-cell bifacial modules.
“We are working hard to be the shining example that manufacturing can be successful in California,” Hoong Kheong “HK” Cheong, president and CEO of Solar4America, was quoted as saying in a statement. “Sacramento had been our home for more than decade and we are looking forward to a long, successful collaboration with the community and our partners throughout the region.”
In June 2023, Solar4America announced it would go further: The company said it would invest $65.9 million to start up a rare domestic cell-manufacturing site in Sumter, S.C., that eventually would boast 2.4 gigawatts of production capacity. After initially intending to produce wafers there, SPI resettled on plans to produce N-type hetero-junction and TOPCon (tunnel oxide passivated contact) solar cells. The site eventually was supposed to employ 300 people.
“We plan to bring the highest-quality domestically produced solar wafers and modules to market, enhancing our nation’s manufacturing capabilities with a long-term investment that will create good-paying jobs for South Carolina,” Chairman Denton Peng said in a statement.
Eviction notices that the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office posted on the McLellan premises on Jan. 29 signaled its shutdown.
Though the site had been projected to employ 400 workers at one point, an estimated 80 had remained on Jan. 1. At peak in mid-2023, the Sacramento operation employed around 140 workers, the former managers estimated.
Rumors have spread suggesting that the company has secured $2 million in new investment to restart the line, but neither former manager said he could gauge their veracity.
Solar4America did little more in Sumter, Blevins said, than to contract initial cleanroom and industrial design and put down deposits on electrical and production equipment that the company aimed to purchase but never did.
A Solar4America employee, he said, is clearing out remaining items stored at the site.
Peng and Cheong and Solar4America attorney George Milionis could not be reached by pv magazine USA to detail the status of the two sites. Without their insights, it’s hard to say which combination of market pricing, policy and trade volatility, commercial litigation or business missteps might seized the burgeoning Solar4America empire.
The former managers believe the company now faces litigation on various fronts.
Though many employees from the better days had trickled out of the company during increasingly interrupted production schedules, Blevins said, some of those who stayed and were furloughed are looking for ways to collect outstanding sums from Solar4America.
“A lot of employees are still owed pay and expenses,” said Blevins, who said he is among them.
Feuerherdt said he is doing what he can to help customers to whom he sold panels but who have said they did not receive any.
Along one avenue, he has tried to arrange for customers to buy modules from Auxin Solar in San Jose, Calif., under a mechanism that would enable them to share in the manufacturer’s receipts of domestic-production incentives to defray the cost of buying a second time, Feuerherdt said.
“I want to make sure they get their modules,” he said.
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