Tariffs Up, Prices Down

U.S. solar manufacturers start 2026 in an odd position. They have made real strides toward reshoring production, but still have a long way to go — and federal and trade policies are layering new uncertainties onto the task.

The U.S. is now actively producing all the major components in the solar supply chain: polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, and modules. That hasn’t happened in over a decade, since SolarWorld closed its wafer-production plant in Oregon in 2013.

“Except for the glass, everything we have in the module could be domestic, should the client choose that,” said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene Solar, which manufactures in Minnesota. ​“The main issue is the limitation on capacity.”

The U.S. can make almost 65 gigawatts of panels annually, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. But it can’t yet build enough of the precursor components to meet the demand for panels. (SEIA expects the U.S. will install 44 gigawatts of direct-current solar capacity this year.)

Major factory construction now underway takes aim at that shortfall, even as factory owners grapple with upheavals in federal domestic and trade policies.

Congress created new rules last year that block tax credits from going to ​“foreign entities of concern,” or FEOC. Those regulations technically kicked in on Jan. 1, but the Treasury Department still needs to release preliminary guidance and launch formal rulemaking.

Separately, an anti-dumping investigation could raise tariffs on solar imports from India, Indonesia, and Laos, as part of a long-running Commerce Department effort to block imports by China-linked companies that build in other countries to avoid steep tariffs.

And last year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick launched an investigation into the national security implications of the polysilicon supply chain, which could impose global tariffs on products that contain polysilicon — including solar panels and their components.

Here are the three biggest storylines to follow for the state of domestic solar manufacturing in 2026.

Factory construction boosts cell and precursor production

As of last year, U.S. factories have officially been able to make enough solar modules to meet domestic demand.

Cell capacity, however, lags far behind, at just 3.2 gigawatts. This year, companies are pushing to catch up.

“If we want to have the manufacturing here, we have to have the cell manufacturing here, because that’s the most difficult step, in many ways; it’s where a lot of the innovation happens,” said Tim Brightbill, a lawyer at Wiley Rein LLP who has brought numerous trade cases on behalf of domestic manufacturers. ​“We can’t just outsource that to China and hope the rest of the industry will be OK.”

Newcomer T1 Energy started building its cell factory in December in Rockdale, Texas, and should open 2.1 gigawatts of cell production by year’s end.

“This is the year of execution for us,” said Russell Gold, T1’s executive vice president for strategic communications. The 100-acre facility will cost $400 million to build and will generate 1,800 jobs. A planned second phase would add another 3.2 gigawatts.

Qcells, the subsidiary of Korean conglomerate Hanwha, is still plugging away on its ingot, wafer, and cell factory in Cartersville, Georgia. The site started producing modules in 2024; it was supposed to produce ingots, wafers, and cells — the more complicated precursor steps — in 2025, but that build-out fell behind schedule. Qcells is aiming to get Cartersville fully operational by the end of 2026, said Marta Stoepker, head of corporate communications at Qcells North America.

Norway’s NorSun had planned a $620 million, 5-gigawatt ingot and wafer factory near Tulsa, Oklahoma, set to open in mid-2026 and supply Heliene and others. But the company’s website returns a 404 error code, and NorSun told Heliene that the Tulsa factory is not moving ahead, Pochtaruk said.

Heliene had wanted to build a cell factory to supply its 1.3-gigawatt module production in Minnesota, but it froze development amid the market turbulence when President Donald Trump took office in 2025. In the coming weeks, Pochtaruk said, Heliene will begin large-scale production of panels using Suniva cells made with domestic wafers, supplied by Corning, which are sliced from domestic polysilicon created by Hemlock Semiconductor in Michigan.

Then there’s an important outlier: First Solar, which has long been the only solar manufacturer with a homegrown supply chain.

First Solar is also unique in that it eschews silicon in favor of thin-film deposition of cadmium and telluride. It’s able to produce a fully functioning solar panel without the separate steps of carving wafers or etching silicon cells. That advantage allowed the company to grow and thrive behind protective U.S. tariffs in the years when the silicon-solar industry collapsed.

First Solar has built 14 gigawatts of domestic manufacturing capacity across Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio and is building a new site in South Carolina.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufacturing/us-solar-manufacturing-in-2026