American Made

First Solar: Investing in America since 1999.

Founded in Ohio, First Solar has grown its manufacturing footprint in the United States from an initial $9.3 million investment in a 74,000 square-foot facility in Perrysburg that created 50 jobs in 1999, to an expected $4 billion cumulative investment in US manufacturing and R&D infrastructure, 9 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D infrastructure across three states, and over 4,000 direct jobs by 2026.

First Solar’s long history of investment in America spans R&D centers in California and Ohio as well as five US factories, which gives it the largest solar manufacturing footprint in the Western Hemisphere. Our portfolio of US manufacturing facilities includes three factories in Ohio, a factory in Alabama, and a factory expected to open in Louisiana in 4Q 2025. These five facilities are estimated to have a collective annual manufacturing capacity of 14 GW when fully operational.

First Solar’s American manufacturing facilities represent some of the most advanced factories of their kind in the solar industry, combining dedicated workers with Industry 4.0 architecture, machine-to-machine communication, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things connectivity to produce a higher degree of automation, precision, and continuous improvement.

A differentiated manufacturing process.

Using a thin film semiconductor rather than crystalline silicon, First Solar’s fully integrated, continuous process enables full quality control under one roof, converting a sheet of glass into a fully functional solar panel in approximately 4 hours. In contrast, competitor technologies utilize three or four factories to process their raw materials into a fully functioning solar panel across several days. 

First Solar’s proven, highly repeatable vertically integrated manufacturing template has allowed it to expand globally, establishing manufacturing sites in India, Malaysia, and Vietnam, all of which use the manufacturing process developed and advanced in Ohio.

First Solar’s manufacturing process uses 98 percent less semiconductor material than traditional crystalline silicon solar panels and yields the lowest carbon footprint and fastest energy payback time in the industry. Learn more about First Solar’s manufacturing process.

Leading the industry with responsible recycling technology.

First Solar’s state-of-the-art recycling processing centers in Ohio, Alabama, Louisiana, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam are co-located with its manufacturing facilities. In 2024, First Solar’s global recycling facilities had a designed annual recycling capacity of 112,000 metric tons (or approximately 3 million modules) and it’s on track to grow its global designed recycling capacity to 136,000 metric tons by the end of 2026. Its proven recycling process achieves high reuse rates of more than 90 percent of glass and allows for closed-loop semiconductor recovery for use in new modules. Learn more about First Solar’s recycling program.