US EV, battery, AI and robotics company Tesla has submitted plans for a US$10.1 billion vertically integrated solar manufacturing campus in Fort Bend County, Texas, according to application documents filed with the Texas Comptroller.
The proposed ‘Project Crystal Sun’ would be built on a 3,050-acre site near Richmond and represents the largest single manufacturing investment Tesla has proposed to date, if approved and developed as planned.
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The investment comprises US$1.5 billion in real property and US$8.6 billion in manufacturing equipment and other personal property. However, the Chapter 312 tax application does not disclose an annual nameplate manufacturing capacity for the facility.
The filing outlines a fully integrated solar manufacturing operation spanning the silicon-to-module value chain. Equipment included in the application covers ingot manufacturing, wafer slicing, chemical coating, metallisation and printing, cell testing and quality control, as well as automated material handling and cleanroom systems.
The scale of the equipment investment will support high-volume automated wafer and cell manufacturing rather than a downstream module assembly facility alone. The proposed campus would also include chemical storage and delivery systems, utility infrastructure and environmental and safety systems.
Commenting on the investment, Joe Hennessy, market research analyst at PV Tech Research, said, “This is a massive investment in US manufacturing, as big as we’ve ever seen for one site. Qcells’s facility at Cartersville cost around US$2.5 billion for 3.3GW of integrated PERC capacity, suggesting this facility could have a capacity of more than 10GW on a single site.”
Tesla is seeking a 10-year property tax limitation under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act to support the development. The project is expected to create 9,712 permanent full-time jobs once fully operational, alongside 1,147 local construction jobs.
Construction is targeted to run from 2026 through 2028, with commercial production scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2029.
Hennessy added: “This year, many suppliers have aimed for vertical integration in the US. This is due to the many barriers imports must go through the antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) and the new Section 232 regulations, starting in December. This will likely start a trend of even more upstream investment, now that those have been announced.”
US solar manufacturers are facing an increasingly complex trade environment, with the US Department of Commerce (DoC) pursuing AD/CVD cases covering imports from India, Indonesia and Laos. US manufacturers have also asked the DoC to investigate alleged circumvention involving Ethiopian solar cells produced by Toyo Solar and Origin Solar using Chinese-origin components, as well as imports of solar cells from South Korea involving Hanwha and other producers.
Furthermore, last week, US President Donald Trump introduced a 15% tariff on imports of products using polysilicon and set minimum prices for polysilicon and its derivatives under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The measures are due to take effect on 4 December 2026. Moustafa Ramadan, head of market research at PV Tech Research, described the move as “one of the biggest events in the US solar landscape.”
For insight into the leading PV module suppliers serving the global utility-scale market, see the PV ModuleTech Bankability Ratings Quarterly report from the PV Tech Research team.
The state of the US solar supply chain will be explored in detail at our annual PV CellTech USA conference in San Francisco on 13-14 October 2026. For full agenda and booking details, click the link above.
