Canadian manufacturer Silfab Solar has raised US$110 million through the sale of Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credits (PTCs) as it looks to move ahead with a new cell and module factory in South Carolina.
The company said that the deal would provide “incremental investment funds” for the company, although it did not specify with whom the deal was struck. This is Silfab’s second PTC transfer deal in the last 12 months, following its sale of tax credits to energy software company Schneider Electric last May, as renewable project developers are increasingly keen to generate additional funds through sales of the tax credits introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
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Tax credit transfers are an increasingly lucrative prospect for the US clean energy space. Last year, Bryen Alperin of investment banker Foss & Company told our colleagues at Energy-Storage.news that “the entire Fortune 500” is keen to participate in a business that could be worth billions of dollars.
“The 45X production incentive remains a formidable and necessary tool to bring manufacturing into the US,” said Silfab CEO and president Paolo Maccario.
Lengthy local opposition
While Silfab did not specify how these funds will be used, much of the company’s focus in recent months has been on its cell and module manufacturing facility in South Carolina. In the last few months, the company has invested an additional US$100 million into the project, and signed a 350MW module supply agreement with independent power producer (IPP) Pivot Energy.
With an annual nameplate cell capacity of 1GW and a nameplate module capacity of 1.3GW, the facility will significantly expand the company’s manufacturing capacity, which currently consists of a 1.1GW module manufacturing facility in Washington state.
However, Silfab initially planned to commission the facility by the end of 2024, with significant delays stemming from sustained local protests against the facility organised by two groups: the Citizens Alliance for Government Integrity (CAGI) and the Coalition to Protect Fort Mill (CPFM).
The protests concern the fact that the site of the Silfab facility is within a mile of local schools, and industrial activities could pose a health risk for those who use and attend the schools. Silfab, meanwhile, has argued that the factory will constitute “light industrial” activity, and not be a “hazardous material treatment and storage facility”, which would require different permits to operate.
Lawmakers have largely sided with Silfab on this matter. The South Carolina Department of Environmental Services first approved the factory in March 2024, and in February this year a judge ruled that construction at the facility should be allowed to continue. The ongoing protests are the latest in a growing trend of local opposition to solar infrastructure, both deployments and manufacturing facilities, which was covered in depth in the latest issue of PV Tech Power.
