GAF BEGINS WORK ON NEW FACTORY FOR SOLAR ROOF TILES IN TEXAS

By Christian Roselund

Solar PV manufacturer GAF Energy has begun construction on a new 450,000 square foot (42,000 square meter) factory in Georgetown, Texas. The factory will have the capacity to make 300 megawatts of the company’s solar roofing tiles annually, a 5-fold expansion on GAF’s capacity at its current factory in California. The company says that when complete the new factory will make it the largest manufacturer of solar roofing tiles in the world.

The new factory has attracted $3.24 million in incentives from Georgetown, and GAF expects to put the plant online in 2023. Notably, construction on the factory began before Democrats in the U.S. Senate announced a deal on clean energy tax credits including incentives for manufacturing. If passed, GAF’s new factory could additionally benefit from the manufacturing tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Many iterations of solar roofing tiles have been introduced in the U.S. market in the past, but the companies making them have not achieved commercial success. One of the most prominent was Dow’s Powerhouse solar shingle, which the company started making in 2011 before discontinuing the product in 2016. The same year Tesla debuted a solar roofing product to great fanfare but has provided little information about how many solar roofs it has installed. Recent reports indicate that Tesla’s solar business is relying mostly on standard modules for residential installations.

Source: GAF Energy announces second U.S. solar roof manufacturing facility in Georgetown, Texas (City of Georgetown, Texas)

Source: Reuters: U.S. solar company GAF Energy to open Texas manufacturing plant (GAF Energy)