Leading US solar PV manufacturer First Solar will lower Series 6 solar module output from its Malaysia and Vietnam factories by a combined 1 GW in 2025. Its focus will now be on its US manufacturing plans.
Its decision stems from the ‘significant near-term uncertainty’ driven by the ‘still unresolved policy environment’ in the US following the recent Presidential elections. Ever since its victory, the Trump administration 2.0 is believed to revise the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its financial support measures for the clean energy industry, while introducing more tariffs across the supply chain, including imported steel and aluminium.
This uncertainty, says First Solar, is slowing down domestic manufacturing expansion while pointing to India’s Premier Energies Limited, which is reviewing its US cell manufacturing plans for the same reason .
Among other factors cited by First Solar is the abundance of Chinese modules in Europe and India’s tariff and non-tariff measures against Chinese cells and modules having the effect of largely eliminating the country as a destination from Malaysia and Vietnam product, as First Solar referred to India’s Basic Customs Duty, and the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers.
All these factors position its US produced modules in an advantageous position relative to its internationally manufactured products.
“While taken together, these items create near-term headwinds for our international production, assuming current policy remains unchanged, we continue to see long-term opportunities to place international products in the U.S. and optimize our allocation position,” said First Solar CFO Alexander Bradley. “The IRA domestic content bonus provisions create significant economic value for our customers. This is enabled by way of the more recently issued points-based domestic content bonus guidance.”
The US has already imposed tariffs on the solar cells and modules shipped from Malaysia and Vietnam, in addition to Thailand and Cambodia.
First Solar targets to expand its nameplate production capacity globally to over 25 GW by 2026, up from 21 GW at the end of 2024, including 14 GW in the US.
Meanwhile, First Solar has signed Everstream Analytics as its end-to-end supply chain solution provider to monitor its supply chain. With its artificial intelligence (AI) and graph technology integrated platform, Everstream will enable the company to identify potential risks, reduce disruptions, and meet market demand fluctuations.
“As our supply chain grows more sophisticated, the competitive solar landscape evolves, and solar plays an increasingly critical role in delivering power generation capacity, maintaining situational awareness is vital,” explained First Solar’s Chief Supply Chain Officer Mike Koralewski.
First Solar says it selected Everstream because of its robust incident monitoring, supplier risk scoring and multi-tier visibility, with direct access to experts in risk intelligence, meteorology, and data science.
“With 24/7 incident monitoring and meteorologist insights at our fingertips, Everstream will help us improve our resilience and agility,” added Koralewski.
A cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar PV manufacturer, First Solar also referred to its tellurium sourcing, saying that the company has been diversifying to mitigate a sole sourcing position in China in the wake of the Chinese government’s export controls on critical materials including tellurium.
