ES Foundry, a South Carolina manufacturer of crystalline solar cells and modules, signed a three-year, 150 MW supply agreement with a community solar developer.
The modules are manufactured using the company’s own crystalline bifacial passivated emitter and rear contact (PERC) solar cells.
In an interview with pv magazine USA Alex Zhu, CEO and founder said the plant initially employed 100 workers and that the company has plans to scale up to 500 by the end of the year. The facility is expected to reach a shipment capacity of 3 GW by Q3 2025.
Under the 150 MW agreement, the developer will purchase the domestically produced modules to support its growing portfolio of projects across the country.
This supply comes at a time when solar is experiencing unprecedented growth in the United States and new tariffs bring increasing cost and uncertainty to the supply chain. Nearly 50 GW of new solar generating capacity was connected to the U.S. power grid in 2024, per the 2025 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook.
“With this agreement, our customer is setting an example for other solar developers to proactively solidify their domestic supply chain strategies,” said Ken Johnston, vice president of sales at ES Foundry. “Developers need certainty, and our commitment is to provide them with a steady supply of high-quality solar cells so they can complete their projects on time and at scale.”
ES Foundry announced in January that it had secured its first GW+, multi-year contract with a top-tier solar module manufacturer. The following month it announced a multi-year agreement to supply 300 MW of solar cells to Bila Solar, a domestic solar module manufacturer based in Indiana.
The pursuit of onshoring the U.S. solar manufacturing supply chain has come with the challenge of imbalanced capacities of domestically made modules, cells, wafers and ingots. But according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q4 2024 report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, the tide may be turning.
Since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, domestic solar module manufacturing has nearly quintupled, according to SEIA. In 2022 the U.S. was producing less than 7 GW, which has grown to over 40 GW today. At today’s full capacity, the U.S. can now produce enough solar modules to meet nearly all U.S. demand, the report said. Demand is expected to be 40.5 GWdc in 2024, followed by average annual volumes of at least 43 GWdc from 2025 to 2029.
Cell manufacturing, however, has been slower to take hold due to the complex and costly process. According to the report, the first U.S. cell manufacturing facility opened in Q3 2024, the first since 2019. While several manufacturers have announced plans to produce cells, current production is negligible with ES Foundry is joining just a handful of U.S. cell manufacturers.
This article was modified on April 17, 2025 to correct the statement that the cells are made in the same location as the modules. ES Foundry has not disclosed the location of its module plant.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.