A North American manufacturer is pressing pause on its plans to build out a solar cell manufacturing facility in Minnesota, opting instead to wait for more clarity from the incoming Trump Administration on the tax credits that made the project viable.
Heliene CEO Martin Pochtaruk has confirmed to Renewable Energy World that his company will hold off on leasing the building for its previously announced solar cell plant in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a joint venture (JV) with India’s Premier Energies. Heliene will also wait to order the necessary equipment for the facility until after Trump decides what lives and dies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the landmark infrastructure legislation championed by President Biden that has pumped billions of dollars into the American economy. Despite bipartisan support, it’s likely some provisions of the IRA will be stripped away, although many experts suspect its core framework will remain intact.
“The 45X Investment Tax Credits (ITC) are an important factor for investment in the US,” Pochtaruk explained. “Until there is certainty on the new administration’s view on them, it would not be cautious to proceed with the very large investment in Heliene’s JV with Premier Energies for solar cell manufacturing.”
The investment totals $200 million: $130 million in capex plus an additional $70 million in working capital. If the facility ever comes to fruition, Heliene plans to produce an annual aggregate capacity of 1 GW NTyp cells at the Twin Cities site to supply Heliene’s U.S. cell requirement in addition to Premier’s.
The Minnesota solar cell manufacturing facility was planned to be the second one operational in the United States, following Suniva’s freshly-minted line in Georgia. Earlier this year, Heliene announced a three-year sourcing contract to produce the first “made in the USA” PV module eligible for the IRA’s domestic tax credits. The first modules were shipped in late 2024, a landmark moment for stateside solar manufacturing.
It is now likely that Qcells’ end-to-end solar manufacturing site in Georgia will be the next to come online. However, it’s unclear how the company will handle losing contracted polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon, which announced it will cease production after failing another purity test.
Heliene’s holding pattern and why it makes sense
Although Heliene is waiting to lease a building and place equipment orders for the PV cell facility, Pochtaruk says the company’s expansion is otherwise proceeding according to plan. Heliene is spending about $50 million on a new module manufacturing line in Rogers, Minnesota that it hopes to have operational by the last week of April or the first week of May 2025. The company has two module lines already running in Mountain Iron, near Duluth, making it one of the most active players in the domestic space.
In a previous interview with Renewable Energy World in late November 2024, Heliene’s CEO was coy about the status of the cell plant in the shadow of the results of the latest presidential election.
“I’m an anxious type of person. I always think twice about everything,” Pochtaruk said. “But I’m also very cautious, and we are, as a company, very cautious. We never bite something we cannot chew, because if you do that, you choke.”
“We might be overthinking it,” he offered. “But it’s better to plan for the best, plan for the worst, and be prepared for everything and anything.”
Pochtaruk and fellow executives eyeing North American expansion have plenty of reason to be cautious. Look no further than the recent misfortunes of Swiss solar panel maker Meyer Burger, which had to cancel a planned 2 gigawatt facility in Colorado after its largest customer, D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI), terminated its purchase agreement with Meyer Burger. That decision made the facility unviable, and now Meyer Burger is navigating the murky waters of trying to get out of contracts committed to the $400 million plant.
It appears Heliene would rather tap the brakes on its expansion than put itself in a similarly over-leveraged position, a sentiment echoed by Pochtaruk in a previous article on Renewable Energy World.
“My job is to ensure that at the end of the month, everybody has a job and that everybody will have a job for years to come,” the CEO leveled, referencing Heliene’s growing workforce. “So that’s why it’s important that we all work, and by that, I mean everybody in the industry, to ensure that we maintain an equitable, fair market. To ensure the things that everybody’s counting on- from tax credits for power generation to tax credits for manufacturing- stay in place, and our industry is sustainable.”
