Translucent Solar announced it will begin production at a solar panel assembly facility in Summerville, South Carolina. The site should reach its 1.2-GW annual manufacturing capacity by the end of the year.
The company says it will make panels for all markets — utility-scale, commercial and residential. This 281,000-ft2 South Carolina plant is part of a “$15.6 million first-phase investment” and will support 167 jobs.
“Summerville is the first step in our multi-year plan, and we intend to expand into U.S. cell and wafer manufacturing in the near future,” said Augustus Rylands, managing director of Translucent Solar, in a press release.
Translucent has wanted to be a player in U.S. panel manufacturing for a while now. The company first announced a relationship with Philadelphia Solar in 2022 to make panels somewhere in the United States, but plans were never finalized.
Several executives with Translucent have previous affiliations with Saudi energy developer and solar panel manufacturer Desert Technologies, including managing directors Rylands and Nour Mousa. Nabih Cherradi is listed as the chief technology officer of both Desert Technologies and Translucent Solar.