After years of relative quiet, Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, New York, has been repurposed to return to its original mission: producing solar components.
This 1.2 million square-foot factory, which received nearly $1 billion in investment from New York State, has faced scrutiny from local organizations questioning Tesla’s employment figures from the outset. Originally built for Silevo in the early 2010s, the factory came under SolarCity’s ownership after the solar installer acquired the solar panel manufacturer in 2014.
Tesla later acquired SolarCity and took over the factory. Initially, Tesla partnered with Panasonic to produce solar cells at the facility, but Panasonic exited in 2020. Since then, the Buffalo factory has produced some solar roof products, served as a core site for electric vehicle superchargers, and functioned as a storage location for autonomous driving vehicle data.
By late 2025, rumors emerged that Tesla would launch a full-size solar panel. During Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk revealed his ambition for the company to develop 100GW of fully integrated solar manufacturing capacity in the United States.
Currently, the United States produces less than 4GW of silicon cells and under 50GW of silicon solar panels annually, not due to a lack of effort. One of the challenges in scaling silicon solar panel production in the U.S. involves the complex intellectual property related to n-type technology. Tesla appears to be designing a unique panel in Buffalo.
The TSP-415 and TSP-420 panels feature 18 “power zones,” allowing the 18 sections of the 1805x1135x40mm panel to operate semi-independently and mitigate shading effects. These panels are specifically designed to work optimally with Tesla’s own inverters. The circulating specification details indicate an efficiency rate of 20.5% for these panels.
Colby Hastings, Tesla’s Senior Director of Energy, informed multiple media outlets that the goal for this year is to expand the panel assembly capacity at the Buffalo factory to 300MW.
