An enormous factory is coming to the Volunteer State, promising to manufacture a building block of photovoltaic cells with a greener process.
Highland Materials, with a big boost of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, is set to erect a 1.2 million-square-foot facility at the Phipps Bend Industrial Park in Surgoinsville, Tennessee, as WJHL reported.
The company, which has been housed in the East Tennessee State University Innovation Lab in Johnson City, earned a $255.6 million federal grant for clean energy manufacturing and recycling and reducing polluting gases. It will begin construction and polysilicon production in 2026 and reach full capacity by 2027, all per WJHL.
The plant, at a cost of over $1 billion, will allow Highland Materials to scale up an aluminum-silicon smelting process, which runs at 800 degrees Celsius, a lower temperature than other more common processes.
"The two main methods to create it — the 'Siemens process' and 'fluidized bed reactor' technology — are both energy intensive and, according to the Highland website, 'require a large amount of volatile chemicals and gases,'" WJHL reported.
The factory will receive raw silicon from mined quartz via rail and create chunks of polysilicon, which can then be turned into ingots and wafers for solar cells within solar panels and lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes.
Highland Materials produces 90% less carbon pollution than other similar companies and requires only up to one-third of the electricity without employing hazardous chemicals, according to WJHL. It will use about 80 megawatts of power to manufacture 16,000 metric tons of polysilicon.
This project, one like it in New Mexico, and others are key to reducing the United States' reliance on dirty energy sources such as coal, gas, and oil, which produce heat-trapping gases driving the planet's warming and intensification of extreme weather events.
It will create 400-plus high-paying jobs as well as apprenticeships and other opportunities via the Northeast State Community College Regional Center for Advanced Manufacturing, WJHL stated.
"The amount of support that we've received and the cooperation between all the people who have supported us has been remarkable," Highland Materials President Richard Rast said, per the outlet, citing the Hawkins County Industrial Development Board, NETWORKS-Sullivan Partnership, Holston Electric Cooperative, Tennessee Valley Authority, and ETSU Research Corporation.
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