Suniva, a solar cell manufacturer based near Atlanta, is building a second factory, a Suniva solar factory in South Carolina that the company says will create 564 jobs. Suniva makes solar cells, the small wafers inside a solar panel that actually turn sunlight into electricity, and the new 620,000 square foot plant in Laurens, South Carolina will add 4.5 gigawatts of new cell manufacturing capacity. A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts, the unit that measures how much electricity worth of cells a factory can turn out in a year. Suniva already runs a 1 gigawatt cell factory in Norcross, Georgia, so the 2 plants together will make more than 5.5 gigawatts a year, enough, the company says, to make it the largest American owned and American operated merchant solar cell manufacturer in the country.
Suniva solar factory South Carolina jobs by the numbers
Suniva first announced the Laurens County project on April 14, 2026, putting the cost at over 350 million dollars and the jobs figure at more than 550, a number Governor Henry McMaster gave more precisely as 564 in his own statement. By September 2026, once its financing had closed, Suniva restated the project, raising the total cost to 600 million dollars and pushing the expected opening from the second quarter of 2027 to late 2027, with full production capacity now targeted for 2028. This article uses the 600 million dollar figure and the later timeline, the most recent and most detailed account Suniva itself has given of its own plans.
With the addition of 564 jobs in advanced manufacturing and energy, Suniva's decision to put down roots in the Palmetto State will create new opportunities for our workforce.
Henry McMaster, Governor of South Carolina. Source 1.
The combined total is the sum of the other 2 bars, not a separately measured factory
Show the numbers
| Norcross, existing | 1 |
| Laurens, new | 4.5 |
| Combined, total | 5.5 |
How Suniva paid for the South Carolina factory
To build the South Carolina factory, Suniva closed 835 million dollars in debt and equity financing by September 2026, a larger figure than the 600 million dollar project cost because it also covers costs beyond the plant itself. Goldman Sachs Alternatives and I Squared Capital provided senior secured credit, JBA Asset Management provided second lien credit, and equity investors included Electron Capital Partners, Orion Infrastructure Capital and Rubric Capital Management, among others.
Suniva's answer is straightforward, we build it here.
Matt Card, president and chief operating officer, Suniva. Source 1.
The 350 million dollar figure comes from the April 2026 announcement, and the 600 and 835 million dollar figures come from the September 2026 financing announcement, both made by Suniva itself
Show the numbers
| Announced, April | 350 |
| Restated, September | 600 |
| Capital, raised | 835 |
The tax credit behind the factory, and the company that helped write it
Keith Adams, who leads renewable energy work at the consulting firm Deloitte in the United States, ties expansions like this one to rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group representing the solar industry, ties the same kind of expansion to the section 45X advanced manufacturing production credit, a federal tax credit created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that pays a manufacturer for producing solar cells and other clean energy components in the United States and selling them to an unrelated buyer, claimed on Internal Revenue Service Form 7207. The same trade association finds that domestic manufacturing capacity for these components has grown under the credit, but that actual production still runs well below demand. Suniva itself is a listed member of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, the industry group that says it advocated for the law now enacted as the section 45X credit, so the company building this factory also helped build the incentive now paying for factories like it.
As the only U.S. owned solar cell manufacturer at commercial scale, we believe Suniva is uniquely well positioned in the market.
Tony Etnyre, chief executive, Suniva. Source 3.
The Laurens factory does not yet exist. Suniva still has to finish construction, hire the 564 workers and reach full production by 2028. Once both factories are running, the company says it will operate more than 5.5 gigawatts of American made solar cell capacity, up from the 1 gigawatt it runs today.