Tesla is planning a massive addition to its manufacturing footprint in Texas. According to a public application filing under the Jobs, Energy, Technology & Innovation (JETI) Act shared by industry watcher @SawyerMerritt on X, Tesla is evaluating a $10.1 billion vertically integrated solar cell manufacturing facility in Fort Bend County, Texas, located about 40 minutes outside Houston.
Internally named “Project Crystal Sun,” construction is scheduled to begin later this year and wrap up in 2028, with commercial operations targeting a launch in Q1 2029.
The filing outlines the core overview of Tesla’s plans:
“Tesla is currently evaluating the development of a solar cell manufacturing facility located in Fort Bend County, Texas, within Lamar CISD’s jurisdiction.
The proposed facility would be expected to manufacture photovoltaic solar cells and/or assembled solar modules, which are components used to convert sunlight into electricity. Operations at the proposed facility would focus on producing finished photovoltaic products for deployment in utility-scale, commercial, and distributed solar installations.
While specific design parameters may vary, solar manufacturing facilities of this type typically include industrial buildings housing production lines, supporting utilities infrastructure, warehousing for raw materials and finished goods, and related site improvements.”
Project Crystal Sun will bring end-to-end component production under one roof. Equipment detailed in the filing includes wafer and ingot manufacturing machinery, coating equipment, metallization and printing lines, cell testing and quality control hardware, automated material handling systems, cleanrooms, and utility infrastructure.
The planned facility’s economic impact in Fort Bend County will be massive. The site expects to create 9,712 permanent full-time jobs alongside 1,147 peak construction jobs. Total direct and indirect economic impacts are estimated to generate ~$6.4 billion in state and local taxes while boosting Texas GDP by roughly $107 billion.
This massive expansion comes after SpaceX also recently broke ground on a solar fab in Texas, although that facility’s meant to support the joint SpaceX-Tesla TERAFAB project and SpaceX’s plans to put AI data centers in orbit.
Scaling up domestic photovoltaic production provides direct support for consumer and commercial hardware. The new solar cell factory could not only contribute to supply for Tesla’s energy products like the new solar panels it launched earlier this year but also help reduce reliance on the grid as AI workloads, which Tesla sees as its next frontier, bite into more and more of it.
The move also aligns with earlier strategic hints. Elon Musk previously discussed a solar Gigafactory in North America to keep Tesla sufficiently power-fed during the ongoing AI boom, recognizing that massive training clusters demand immense energy generation.
By building out solar cell manufacturing alongside battery storage infrastructure in Texas, Tesla is vertically integrating the energy supply required to keep its AI clusters, factories, and consumer products powered for years to come.
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