SEG Solar, a solar panel maker based in Houston, Texas, opened a second Texas plant in Tomball in August 2026, and it is hiring hundreds of workers there. The plant is not adding 800 jobs. The announcement from SEG Solar about the opening says approximately 800 people attended the ceremony that day, company employees, local government officials, industry partners, customers and journalists together, not 800 people hired to work there. No source checked for this article states an exact jobs number for the Tomball plant, so this article uses the hiring picture reported separately instead, hundreds of open positions.
SEG Solar Texas plant jobs and capacity by the numbers
The Tomball plant cost 200 million dollars to build and covers more than 500,000 square feet, SEG Solar says. It adds 4 gigawatts of new solar panel manufacturing capacity a year. A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts, the unit that measures how much electricity worth of panels a factory can turn out in a year. SEG Solar says its 2 Texas plants together will make 6 gigawatts of solar panels a year once both run at full capacity, so the plant it already runs nearby must make about 2 gigawatts a year, the difference between the combined figure and the new plant. The new plant makes heterojunction panels, a design called HJT for short that layers different materials on the same cell to capture more sunlight, using a low temperature soldering and sealant process the company says improves durability. The Tomball plant made its first panel on September 15, 2026, about 5 weeks after the opening ceremony.
Seeing another SEG manufacturing facility stand on American soil is a proud moment for all of us.
Jun Zhuge, founder and chief operating officer of SEG Solar. Source 1.
The existing plant figure is the combined total minus the new plant capacity, both numbers stated by the company
Show the numbers
| Existing, Texas plant | 2 |
| Tomball, new plant | 4 |
| Combined, total | 6 |
Who SEG Solar is hiring in Texas
Local reporting on the Tomball plant and the existing SEG Solar plant nearby found the company looking for hundreds of workers, not the roughly 800 people who attended the opening ceremony. Many entry level positions need no more than a high school diploma and no prior experience, and starting pay is 18 dollars an hour, climbing past 60 dollars an hour for more senior roles, the reporting found. An economist at a Workforce Solutions organization credited the wider advanced manufacturing sector in the Houston area with 44% growth over the past year.
I'm filled with a lot of knowledge about solar panels now, and I feel like I can train a lot of new employees that walk in here.
Ailen Alvarez, training supervisor at the SEG Solar Tomball plant. Source 3.
The tax credit and the trade policy behind the expansion
The chief executive of SEG Solar ties expansions like this one to the power needs of large facilities and to solar as a fast way to add electricity supply. The section 45X advanced manufacturing production credit, created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, pays a manufacturer for producing solar cells, panels and other clean energy components in the United States and selling them to an unrelated buyer, claimed on Internal Revenue Service Form 7207. A facility already claiming a separate credit for building the factory itself cannot also claim this one. The words from SEG Solar tie its own expansion to trade policy and a domestic supply chain the company says it can trace fully. This site has also documented a similar factory expansion using the same tax credit, in South Carolina.
These facilities need a lot of power, and they need it quickly, and solar is the way they can accomplish part of their power needs.
Jim Wood, chief executive of SEG Solar. Source 3.
SEG Solar says total capacity will pass 10.6 gigawatts once the third plant opens, so the real total may run higher. The current 6 gigawatt figure was previously stated by the company in sources 1 and 2
Show the numbers
| Current, combined total | 6 |
| Third plant, planned | 4.6 |
| Future, total goal | 10.6 |
The Tomball plant only began production in September 2026 and still has to fill the hundreds of positions it needs. SEG Solar says it plans a third United States facility, adding 4.6 gigawatts of capacity and expected to finish in 2028, which the company says would push its total United States manufacturing capacity to more than 10.6 gigawatts, though that plant does not yet exist either.