New solar panel plants planned for the US [View all]

[Finishline42]

First Solar plans plant for Alabama.

First Solar said Wednesday that it has selected Alabama as the site for its fourth U.S. panel factory.

The company will spend more than $1 billion on the new site, which it said will be producing by 2025.

CEO Mark Widmar previously said the recently passed climate bill was a key catalyst for the new facility.

First Solar CEO Mark Widmar previously told CNBC that the Inflation Reduction Act was the key catalyst that led First Solar to choose the U.S. for its latest factory.

The new facility will produce 3.5 gigawatts of solar modules annually by 2025. The company said the site will create more than 700 new jobs.

Enel North America intends to build one of the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing facilities in the US, expected to initially produce at least 3 GW and scale up to 6 GW of high-performance bifacial PV modules and cells annually. The proposed facility will be among the first in the United States to produce PV cells, the key building blocks that make up solar panels.

The facility is expected to create up to 1,500 new clean energy jobs, while also supporting the creation of a domestic solar PV supply chain to accelerate the growth of US generated energy and add to the country's domestic solar cell and panel manufacturing capacity.

Construction of the proposed factory is expected to begin in the first half of 2023, and it's anticipated that the first panel will be produced and available to the market by the end of 2024.

The proposed US factory will be Enel's second solar PV manufacturing facility globally. The company previously announced the expansion of its 3Sun Gigafactory in Catania, Sicily, increasing its production capacity from 200 MW to 3 GW.