US tracker manufacturer Nextracker has delivered what it says are the first trackers to comply entirely with the domestic content manufacturing guidelines of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The trackers have been delivered to SB Energy’s Pelican’s Jaw project, which combines 570MW of solar capacity and 954MWh of batteries and is currently being built in California by engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm SOLV Energy.
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“By systematically focusing our manufacturing partnerships close to our customer project sites, we secure the supply chain and provide superior on-time delivery and cost savings for project development and construction,” said Nextracker founder and CEO Dan Shugar. “We also significantly decarbonise our products by incorporating clean steel manufactured in the US.”
The news follows a number of investments made into Nextracker’s manufacturing work in the US, including the expansion of its Pennsylvania manufacturing facility in April this year and its collaboration with Unimacts at a torque tube production facility in Nevada in June. Over the summer, Nextracker president Howard Wenger told PV Tech Premium that “you can expect more announcements in the US”, as the company looks to expand its domestic manufacturing capacity further under the IRA.
This sustained investment in manufacturing comes as rules surrounding tax credits offered under the IRA have been finalised. In October, the Department of the Treasury finalised its rules for the 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit, a key part of the IRA that seeks to encourage domestic clean energy manufacturing, while rules for the Investment Tax Credit were finalised earlier this month.
The IRA has encouraged a boom in US solar manufacturing in particular, with figures from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, published in September, reporting that since the passage of the IRA, solar manufacturing capacity in the US has nearly quadrupled. Nextracker’s announcement this week is a positive development for the manufacturing, not just of modules, but of adjacent technologies such as trackers.
