$60M Solar Panel Plant Slated for Phoenix

Image by cverkest via pixabay.com

JA Solar, a Beijing-based international manufacturer of solar cells and modules, has leased more than three-quarters of a million square feet in Phoenix for its first manufacturing facility in the U.S., the Arizona Commerce Authority announced.

The $60 million facility will produce high-performance photovoltaic products and is expected to be in operation by the fourth quarter of 2023 and to employ more than 600 people.

The facility reportedly will use highly automated assembly lines to produce high-efficiency solar panels (PV modules) for commercial and residential rooftop applications, and also for utility-scale solar power plants, with an eventual annual production capacity of 2 gigawatts. That will make the factory the largest manufacturing site for solar/PV products in Arizona.

READ ALSO: Green Building: Pathway to Profit and Resiliency

The Phoenix Business Journal reported that the 763,410-square-foot building is part of GO Industrial’s GO | 99 South campus at the southeast corner of 99th Avenue and Buckeye Road in western Phoenix.

That building is the largest of three at the nearly 1.3 million-square-foot campus. It features 40-foot clear height, 122 dock-high doors and four grade-level doors, typical 53- by 56-foot bays, about 157 trailer stalls and 712 parking spaces, a 7-inch floor slab over a 4-inch ABC unreinforced slab, R-30 batt insulation with white scrim and clerestory windows, according to a GO Industrial brochure.

Sunny outlook

Arizona has seen substantial investments by renewable energy companies over the past couple of years.

In December 2021, for example, Meyer Burger Technology AG leased a 276,000-square-foot building at CIM Group’s Goodyear Airport 85 campus, in Goodyear, Ariz. The Swiss company will use the space for a production facility for high-performance solar modules, eventually ramping up to manufacture 1.5 gigawatts’ worth annually.

Separately, last August, GO Industrial, in partnership with a real estate fund advised by Crow Holdings Capital, sold a two-building, 505,692-square-foot logistics campus, 5600 Logistics, in Salt Lake City.