Dive Brief:
- T1 Energy, formerly known as Freyr Battery, announced plans on Monday to establish a $850 million, 5-gigawatt solar cell facility in Rockdale, Texas.
- The upcoming factory will employ up to 1,800 manufacturing jobs, according to the press release. The site will house eight lines with a mix of 210RN and 210N silicon wafers for the solar cells, according to a Q4 2024 presentation.
- T1 Energy aims to begin construction in Q2 or Q3, Chairman and CEO Daniel Barcelo said in a March 17 earnings call. Production is anticipated to begin in Q4 2026.
Dive Insight:
The Rockdale plant advances T1 Energy’s new strategy to shift focus to solar energy, a plan it launched in November 2024, alongside the initial announcement of the facility.
“Demand for these solutions in the U.S. is expected to continue growing,” Barcelo said. “The emergence of power-intensive industries such as AI and cryptocurrency, and the electrification of the transportation sector will necessitate significant investment in the U.S. grid. Solar and battery storage is emerging as a preferred solution to provide low-carbon reliable, cost-competitive power while enhancing grid reliability.”
At the time of the strategy launch, the company operated as Freyr Battery and was mid-construction on a $2.57 billion battery cell manufacturing plant in Newnan, Georgia. It axed those plans last month and sold the land for net proceeds of $22.5 million, Barcelo said on the call.
Around the same time, the manufacturer underwent a full makeover with a new name, logo and ticker symbol as T1 Energy.
The changes include relocating the company’s headquarters, for the second time in just over a year. The company was originally based in Luxembourg and moved its headquarters to Newnan, Georgia, in January 2024. Now, the company has made Austin, Texas, its home, according to a Feb. 10 press release.
“Our corporate transformation positions us to build on our U.S. solar manufacturing position and to leverage our team's expertise in the battery market,” Barcelo said on the call. “Solar and battery storage developments are among the fastest-growing resources of electricity supply in the U.S. based on declining costs and the speed with which our customers can bring projects online.”
The Lone Star State has been heavily involved in T1 Energy’s shifting focus on the U.S. solar and battery storage sector. Now that the company has picked Rockdale for the plant, it is expected to be T1 Energy’s earnings and cash flow engine, Barcelo said. He added that it’s “very important” that T1 Energy begins construction on the facility midway through the year to begin production by the end of 2026.
The site is the company’s “second piece” of its “American-made supply chain,” Barcelo said on the call. The first piece is a 5-GW solar module manufacturing facility in Wilmer, Texas, which T1 Energy acquired last year from Trina Solar.
“When we have those domestic cells, we believe that the combination of domestic cells and the combination of domestic modules will enable us to be a very important part of the U.S. supply chain for solar,” Barcelo said.
The Wilmer plant gives T1 Energy an “American manufacturing platform” to maximize domestic production, with the Rockdale plant as a key step to achieving that goal, Jaime Gualy, EVP of corporate development, said on the call.
While the Rockdale site is being built, the company plans to pursue U.S.-based component suppliers in an effort to help customers qualify for Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives, Gualy added.
Meanwhile, the Wilmer plant’s output production is ahead of schedule. For the first two months of 2025, the facility exceeded T1 Energy’s forecast by nearly 50%, according to the presentation.
“With four lines already on production and construction installation activities expected to be complete during the first half of 2025, we are on track to achieve our full year 2025 production target of 3.4 gigawatts,” Barcelo said of the facility.
