SEG Solar has opened its newest facility, a 4 GW solar module assembly plant in Tomball, Texas. Once the plant is fully operational next year, it will bring SEG’s annual module assembly capacity to 6 GW, joining the company’s original 2 GW facility in nearby Houston.
As part of the grand opening ceremonies, SEG also announced plans to build an additional 4.6 GW module assembly factory within 18 months. The new facility would be located across the street from the new Tomball plant and bring the company’s total annual capacity to 10.6 GW, making it the largest crystalline silicon solar module assembler in the United States.
In addition to the new module capacity, the company said it plans to build a solar cell manufacturing plant in the U.S. by 2028.
The announcement of plans for cell capacity came on an auspicious day — less than 24 hours prior to the grand opening ceremony, the Trump administration unveiled a plan to implement a price floor and additional tariffs levied on all imported solar cells and modules under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
During the ceremony, emcee (and SEG general counsel) Michael Eden referred to the company’s impending need to make decisions about how to respond to the tariffs as “a tall order” for CEO Jim Wood, but expressed confidence in the CEO’s abilities.
“We’re all looking to Jim to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and tell us how we’re going to navigate this next challenge for the solar industry,” Eden said.
The ceremony included numerous speakers in addition to Eden and Wood, including SEG VP of operations Timothy Johnson, senior VP of DEPCOM Power Natasha Cherenkova, Paul Wormser of Intertek CEA, Nico Johnson of Suncast Media and local business leaders.
The final presentation of the event was given by SEG founder and COO Jun Zhuge, who unveiled the company’s plans for expanding its stateside module assembly and cell manufacturing capacity. Zhuge said the company’s U.S. facilities would reach a production level of 70,000 modules a day when the second Tomball factory added 4.6 GW of new capacity in 2027.
Zhuge closed his portion of the event by displaying a slide with a timeline that extended to 2029, with a photograph of the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City and a heading that read “IPO?”
Following Zhuge’s speech, all the speakers gathered on stage to officially open the plant with a ceremonial switch-throwing, and the company welcomed guests on a tour of the facility.
Plans for operation and employment
During the tour, SEG operations VP Johnson led a group of attendees through the facility, walking step-by-step through the manufacturing lines.
The plant is made with three front-end lines, consisting of cell-stringing and glass and encapsulant layup machines; eight giant lamination machines; and four output lines.
He said that when fully operational, the lines would run 7 days per week, 20 hours per day, with time for maintenance and employee breaks.
SEG plans to start pilot calibration of the facility within the next few weeks, bringing on 100 workers to start the lines up. Those workers are now being trained at the company’s original Houston facility.
At full capacity, the Tomball facility is expected to be staffed by 500 workers and produce as many as 30,000 solar modules per day.
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