Sacramento-based solar panel manufacturer SPI Energy Co. Ltd. has invested more than $10 million in equipment at its solar panel factory at McClellan Park, and the company plans to keep increasing production of its American-made solar panels.
Starting in June last year, the company brought in 58 containers of new manufacturing equipment, and more is on the way, said Andrew Hughan, director of government relations with SPI (Nasdaq: SPI) subsidiary SolarJuice USA Inc.
“We want to be the shining example that manufacturing can happen in California,” Hughan said.
The company has 120 employees working two shifts now, and it hopes to have 400 employees working three shifts, six days a week by the end of this year. The factory is highly automated, so the employees mostly monitor the equipment and work in quality control and material handling.
SPI at the end of 2021 took over the lease of Sunergy America LLC, which had a 140,000-square-foot solar panel manufacturing plant at McClellan Park. SPI moved its headquarters to Sacramento from Santa Clara last May.
The company cleared out the space and installed a new manufacturing line in the summer with capacity to manufacture enough panels annually to produce 150 megawatts of electricity. SPI also installed a new 550-megawatt line that it is now testing to begin production potentially by the end of the month, Hughan said. The Sacramento factory produces 410-watt residential solar panels and 550-watt commercial solar panels. They are sold to installers under the brand Solar4America.
The installation cost more than $2 million, not including the investments in tenant improvements in the building.
Another 550-megawatt manufacturing line is in planning stages for the existing building, Hughan said, and the company is getting an additional 56,000 square feet of space in an adjacent building for a manufacturing line of 650 megawatts. That line would start in 2024 or 2025, and it would require getting more power capacity from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to the building.
SPI is reaching out to investors this month to spin off its SolarJuice Co. Ltd. subsidiary in a stock offering. The prospective shares for SolarJuice have not been priced and there is no number of shares offered listed yet, according to MarketWatch. The company announced the spinoff in September.
SolarJuice Co. Ltd. would be based in Australia, and SPI Energy would own more than 50% of its voting shares, according to a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a foreign-owned company to be listed on an American exchange.
SolarJuice would own the photovoltaic panel manufacturing operation that SPI Energy currently owns at McClellan Park.
SPI Energy has two primary divisions, including SolarJuice that makes Solar4America-branded solar modules for residential and commercial applications and EdisonFuture/Phoenix Motor, which makes electric vehicles in Southern California.
