Tesla plans $10B solar manufacturing facility in Texas

Tesla has filed for tax incentives in Texas to build a $10.1 billion solar manufacturing facility in Fort Bend County, near Houston. The project, internally dubbed “Project Crystal Sun,” would be one of the most ambitious domestic solar manufacturing bets ever placed by a single company. The application, submitted on July 22 under Texas’s Jobs, Energy, Technology & Innovation (JETI) Act, outlines a vertically integrated production complex spanning roughly 3,000 acres. If approved, construction would begin in late 2026, wrap up by 2028, and operations would launch in Q1 2029. What Tesla is actually building Tesla is planning a full-stack solar manufacturing operation, handling everything from raw ingots and wafers to finished photovoltaic cells and assembled solar modules. The facility would produce modules for utility-scale projects as well as distributed generation, which covers rooftop and smaller commercial installations. Tesla already operates a solar panel production site at a nearby Brookshire location in Texas, so this represents a dramatic scaling of existing operations rather than a cold start. The economic math The company projects 9,712 permanent full-time positions ...