US-based module manufacturer Translucent Solar has entered production ramp-up at its module assembly plant in South Carolina.
Spanning over 283,000 square feet, the facility has an annual nameplate capacity of 1.2GW.
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The company aims to reach full operations by the end of the year, and a spokesperson at the company told PV Tech that the manufacturing equipment “can do PERC, TOPCon & HJT modules”.
In the past two months, several module and cell manufacturers have brought US manufacturing capacity online, including SEG Solar’s 4GW HJT module plant in Texas, Canadian Solar’s 6GW HJT cell plant in Indiana, ES Foundry’s 2GW solar cell expansion in South Carolina and QCells’ 3.3GW cell production in Georgia.
The influx of new solar cell and module manufacturing annual nameplate capacity comes as a recent report from clean energy financing platform Crux highlighted the increase in clean energy manufacturing in the first two quarters of 2026.
According to Crux, this was primarily driven by the solar supply chain, with solar manufacturing investments increasing by 30% between Q1 and Q2 2026 to US$893 million.
Augustus Rylands, managing director of Translucent Solar, said: “Summerville is the first step in our multi-year plan, and we intend to expand into US cell and wafer manufacturing in the near future.”
A spokesperson told PV Tech that Translucent Solar expects to begin producing solar cells by November 2027, with an annual nameplate capacity of 1.2GW.
Rylands added that the Section 232 tariffs on polysilicon have given solar manufacturers such as Translucent Solar “the long-term certainty needed to invest at scale”.
Solar PV manufacturing opportunities in the US solar sector 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.
The article was updated on 20.08.26 to include Translucent Solar’s response to the technology used at its module assembly plant and a timeline for solar cell production.
