https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/t1-energy-texas-factory
"DALLAS — The automated machinery and bright, clean factory floor wouldn’t look
out of place in the solar manufacturing hub of Changzhou, China. But every so
often, the pristine industrial order was punctuated by, of all things, carrier
robots blasting psychedelic rock as they rolled down the aisles.
T1 Energy runs this half-mile-long factory just 15 miles south of Dallas, where
seven parallel manufacturing lines produced more than 20,000 photovoltaic
modules on the day I visited in October. After ramping up in the early months
of 2025, T1 is on track to produce up to 3 gigawatts this year, but with the
systems dialed in and workers operating 24/7, the facility has been running
fast enough to make 5 gigawatts in a year, said Russell Gold, executive vice
president for strategic communications.
The factory is finding its legs just as the Trump administration vaporizes
pro–clean energy policies and instead pursues a fossil-heavy vision of “energy
dominance.”
“What the manufacturers here really want, and really need, is just certainty,”
said MJ Shiao, vice president of supply chain and manufacturing at the trade
group American Clean Power. What they got this year was “policy whiplash,” he
said, which has caused the Biden-era drumbeat of clean-energy manufacturing
announcements to morph into a chorus of cancellations, per data from Atlas
Public Policy.
But T1 nonetheless is staking a claim to homegrown American solar energy and
making the case that it’s still lucrative. The firm has plowed ahead this year,
signing deals for U.S.-made polysilicon and U.S.-made steel frames and
preparing to build its own solar-cell fabrication facility.
Gold pointed to the booming demand for solar, which has become the biggest
source of new power plant capacity getting built in the U.S. today by a long
shot."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-were-reading-bike-friendly-world-mission/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
