Meyerburger Drops US Cell Manufacturing Plan

MeyerBurger Drops US Cell Manaufacturing Plans Citing Viability

By Prasanna Singh/ Updated On Tue, Aug 27th, 2024

In a development that seemed to surprise some, Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger announced on August 26 that it was suspending planned construction of a silicon solar cell production facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Meyer Burger cited financial viability as a reason for the decision.

The company had first announced plans for a cell factory in the US in July 2023, widely seen as an effort to take advantage of the incentives offered under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The planned 2-GW operations was to use a former Intel semiconductor fabrication plant with output expected to support it’s operational module assembly facility in Goodyear, Arizona. The latter has been running since June with a 1.4 GW capacity, which Meyerburger now says will be expanded to 2 GW or more.

Meyer Burger says its existing cell production facility in Thalheim, Germany, will remain fully operational and continue to be the company’s core solar cell supplier as they remain the ‘most economical’ option under the current market conditions.

Meyer Burger, which specializes in heterojunction technology (HJT), had earlier transitioned from an equipment and technology supplier to a module and cell manufacturer itself, as it sought to benefit from a booming solar market. As part of the US plans, it had also shuttered a module assembly plant in Germany, citing higher costs in Europe and lack of protection from lower priced (Chinese) imports.

The IRA, while catalysing a surge of investment across the solar supply chain in the US, has coincided with record low and falling solar prices in the Industry’s dominant source country, China. At these prices, many manufacturers have relooked plans to invest, as they worry about post IRA circumstances in 2030 and beyond. Even with some tariff protection, many believe the higher costs in the US will still make their output uncompetitive. That was one reason a lion’s share of focus went towards module making, which is more of an assembly operation, rather than the much more complicated cell making, or even more competitive ingot and wafer manufacturing. In these areas as well many firms, notably Nexwafe in wafers, has dropped plans to make in the US. One way out might be to seek establishing manufacturing in neighbouring Mexico as some experts have suggested, but without IRA incentives, that idea will also need to be evaluated carefully.