America’s Biggest Solar Factory Is Nearly Complete

Current conditions: Tropical Storm Cristina is inching north toward landfall in Central America, threatening floods, landslides, and winds of up to 73 miles per hour • Washington, D.C., is poised for rain for the rest of the week as temperatures rise to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit by Friday • By contrast, Cartersville, Georgia, where the solar manufacturer Qcells just started up its factory, is looking at a two-day break of sunshine from an otherwise gray and wet forecast.

THE TOP FIVE

1. America’s biggest solar factory is nearing full capacity

At the start of 2023, South Korea’s biggest solar manufacturer, Qcells, began construction on a sweeping new factory northwest of Atlanta in Cartersville, Georgia. Betting that U.S. tariffs on Chinese solar panels were here to stay, the company gambled on bringing most of the supply chain under one roof. On Tuesday, Qcells started producing solar cells at the plant, marking what it called “a major milestone toward completing the country’s only vertically integrated solar manufacturing plant.” The firm expects to reach full production by the third quarter of this year. The factory’s module assembly line, meanwhile, is now at full capacity, building 16,700 panels per day. “Producing the first solar cells at Cartersville is a milestone for Qcells and for American manufacturing,” Andy Park, the global chief executive of Qcells, said in a statement. “As our ingot, wafer, and cell lines reach full capacity, we’ll be making the major components of a solar panel right here in Georgia.”

The U.S. could be seeing the start of a small solar boom. Last year alone, at least 30 new utility-scale solar factories came online, as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported last month.

2. Trump’s courtroom loss on solar and wind tax credits won’t amount to much

Over the weekend, as I told you on Monday, a federal court blocked the Trump administration’s rules for using the soon-to-expire tax writeoffs for investing in or producing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines. But with just 24 days to go until the tax credits officially end, few developers are likely to move quickly enough to benefit from the ruling. “Practically speaking, I don’t think this is likely to have much impact on the market or behavior in the coming weeks,” Heather Cooper, a tax lawyer at McDermott Will & Schulte, told E&E News. “The deadline is less than four weeks away.”

3. Global grid investments are set to eclipse $650 billion this year

Investments into electrical grids are on track to surpass $650 billion globally this year, according to new data from the consultancy Rystad Energy. That’s up 5% from last year and more than double the investments recorded in 2020, PV Magazine reported. The high cost comes as long lead times and pricy components for transformers, high-voltage circuit breakers, and switchgears strain and stall upgrades and expansions to power systems all over the world. The soaring growth of wind and solar is propelling grid investments, which are needed to patch more intermittent and often far-flung renewables onto the system. In 2010, wind and solar made up just 2% of global generation. By 2040, Rystad expects them to make up nearly half the mix.

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4. Canada just refurbished a reactor early and under budget

Everyone recognizes Canada as a major oil producer, metal miner, and hydroelectricity generator. But did you know the Canucks are not just a serious player in nuclear power, but actually have their own domestically-designed reactor that can run on raw uranium? Get this, it even has a catchy name: the CANDU. Pronounced CAN-do and short for Canada Deuterium Uranium, the pressurized heavy water reactors are among the only commercial designs in the world that can run on unenriched, natural uranium. The advantage, especially for a country like Canada with vast uranium deposits, is that they’re faster to build, cheaper to fuel, and free of the international scrutiny that comes with enriching uranium. The downside is that they break down faster than the light water reactors that make up the entirety of the U.S. fleet. But Canada is demonstrating that isn’t a big problem. On Monday, the Bruce nuclear power station brought its Unit 3 reactor back online, completing refurbishments seven months early and $107 million under budget, NucNet reported. You don’t need to know a lot about the American or European nuclear industries to know “early and under budget” aren’t words typically associated with any recent or ongoing projects.

5. German steel giant inks a major green hydrogen deal

The best-proven way to make truly green steel involves turning iron ore into direct reduced iron through a process that, when powered by green hydrogen instead of natural gas, significantly slashes any carbon emissions associated with its production. Assuming it’s finished off in an electric arc furnace, it’s green steel — and even greener if that final process was powered by renewables or nuclear. Yet despite some high-profile projects, green hydrogen has remained too expensive in the West, even as China’s industry starts to boom. That could be changing. On Tuesday, the German steelmaker Salzgitter inked its first major offtake agreement for green hydrogen from the supplier EWE, Hydrogen Insight reported. One of Germany’s largest steel producers, Salzgitter will buy roughly 10,000 metric tons of hydrogen per year from the electrolyzer plant EWE is building in Emden, near the Dutch border.

Meanwhile in America, U.S. Steel unveiled plans to invest up to $2.5 billion into upgrading the Mon Valley Works, southeast of Pittsburgh. The renovations come after Japanese steel giant Nippon’s takeover of the iconic American firm last year. To win President Donald Trump’s blessing, Nippon gave the federal government a “golden share” in the company. As Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote last year, that could ultimately give a future administration leverage to press U.S. Steel to green its operations.

THE KICKER

While spot prices are coming back down, they're still far above recent years. EIA

If you’re booking a flight right now, you might not yet be feeling the difference. But U.S. production of jet fuel has reached record highs as refiners scramble to respond to soaring prices following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. By the start of May, the four-week average estimate of fuel production surpassed 2 million barrels per day for the first time on record, according to new analysis by the Energy Information Administration. But with domestic inventories still relatively high, much of that increased production is being exported.