Indian solar manufacturer Waaree Energies has announced a plan to build a 3GW module manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas.
The company said the new manufacturing plant will be capable of producing 3GW of modules annually by the end of next year, before scaling up its manufacturing capacity to 5GW by 2027 with a further investment of up to US$1 billion.
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Waaree added that the majority of the major components used in the manufacturing of these solar modules will be sourced in the US, enabling the project to benefit from the 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit introduced by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
According to Waaree, it supplied 4GW of modules to the US market in 2023, including shipping 850MW of modules to Spanish developer Acciona Energia for use at its solar sites in the US. The two companies have also signed a three-year supply agreement for 1.5GW of modules to be delivered from 2024-26.
The modules in question were monocrystalline passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) modules and will be deployed at four US projects across the states of Texas, Illinois and Ohio. The largest is the 375MW Red Tailed Hawk solar site in Texas, which is Acciona’s largest PV project to date.
Waaree also supplied modules for the 56MW Fort Bend project (Texas), 129MW High Point project (Illinois) and the 288MW Union project (Ohio).
At its new Houston module manufacturing plant, Waaree will also add a solar cell manufacturing plant that it expects to be operational by 2025. The new module manufacturing plant will supply multiple gigawatts of solar modules to US renewables investor SB Energy over the next five years.
Currently, SB Energy has more than 2GW of solar in operation, 1GW under construction, and more than 15GW of solar and storage in development across the US. SB Energy also raised US$2.4 billion in funding to support the construction of 1.3GW of new solar capacity in the US recently.