GAFFNEY, S.C. — Upstate South Carolina now has a working solar module factory. First Solar opened the first phase of its Cherokee County plant on Oct. 28, with state and federal leaders on hand for the ribbon cutting on the factory floor.
Roughly 500 people already work there. The company expects that to climb to nearly 700 jobs when a second phase is finished by mid-2027, and it put the total cost of the two-phase project at about $330 million.
Once the second phase is running, the plant should be able to turn out 3.4 gigawatts of modules a year, double its starting capacity. Chief executive Mark Widmar likened that yearly output to about three and a half large nuclear reactors.
The pay is a selling point for the county. Widmar said factory workers will average $74,000 a year, which he described as about twice Cherokee County per-capita income.
The Gaffney site is the sixth U.S. plant for the Arizona-based company, which also builds in Ohio, Alabama and Louisiana and already runs a distribution center in Duncan. The new line finishes Series 6 Plus modules that are started at the company plants overseas, part of an effort to bring more of the work onto American soil.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined Gov. Henry McMaster, Sen. Darline Graham and state Sen. Harvey Peeler at the event. Lutnick tied the project to federal tariffs on imported solar materials, while McMaster said it shows why the state keeps landing manufacturers. Graham called the plant the largest job creator in Cherokee County.
First Solar says it will have put more than $5 billion into American manufacturing and research since 2019 by the end of this year, and it expects about 17 gigawatts of U.S. module capacity by 2027.
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