By the end of October 2025, Corning announced that its Michigan facility had begun producing silicon ingots and wafers in the third quarter of 2025, with plans to ramp up daily production to 1 million wafers by the fourth quarter.
The construction of this ingot and wafer facility was completed in an exceptionally short timeframe. The project was first publicly announced in October 2024. Although construction likely commenced even earlier, the progress remains remarkably fast by U.S. standards for such facilities.
This milestone is significant for U.S. solar manufacturing, marking the first domestic production of silicon ingots and wafers in nearly a decade. However, given the scale of currently operational module capacity and the expectation of several gigawatts of solar cell production coming online in the coming months, this output level remains insufficient to meet the demands of the entire value chain.
Apart from Corning, the only other crystalline silicon solar manufacturer currently building an ingot/wafer production facility is Hanwha Qcells, which is establishing a 3.3GW fully integrated plant in Cartersville, Georgia. This manufacturing facility is expected to commence operations in early 2026, but the wafers produced will be exclusively for internal use.
