Suniva has chosen to build its new 4.5-gigawatt solar cell facility in South Carolina using PERC technology rather than the more advanced TOPCon process, a decision driven by legal clarity, production speed, and the structure of the US solar supply chain, according to company statements reported by PV Tech this week. The manufacturer, which relaunched operations in Georgia in 2024 after emerging from bankruptcy, has already secured offtake agreements for the majority of the new facility's output. Company CEO Mike Card told the outlet that PERC remains a "workhorse product" in the US market, validating the company's strategy as it scales up domestic cell production.

The US currently operates 77.3 gigawatts of module manufacturing capacity but only 26.5 gigawatts of cell production capacity, according to figures from PV Tech Research cited in the report. That imbalance extends further upstream: the country has just 15.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic-allocated polysilicon production and only 5 gigawatts of domestic wafer manufacturing capacity. Card described this as a "radically inverted and wide pyramid" of production capacity across the solar supply chain, with far more downstream assembly than upstream component manufacturing.

Card outlined three reasons for selecting PERC over TOPCon in conversations with the outlet. The legal landscape factored heavily: "What we did not want to do was build a facility and then immediately get enjoined by someone saying 'you have a patent violation here, you have a patent violation there,'" he explained, pointing to ongoing disputes involving major TOPCon manufacturers. On production economics, Card said TOPCon requires multiple additional manufacturing steps and takes "several hours" longer to produce a single cell compared to PERC. He framed the technology choice as addressing volume over efficiency: "The challenge in the US, in the intermediate term—meaning one to five or six years—was not power per unit, but it was sheer number of units."

The company's technology decision reflects broader shifts in US solar policy, which Card credits with creating conditions for domestic manufacturing growth. Between 30 and 35 cell and module manufacturers went out of business in the US during the 2010s amid competition from Chinese imports, according to Card's account. Suniva itself filed for bankruptcy in 2017 before policy changes—including tariffs stemming from a Section 201 complaint and passage of the Inflation Reduction Act—made reopening economically viable. Card described onshoring as an "evolution" rather than a "revolution," noting the country spent four decades moving manufacturing offshore and can't reverse that overnight. The company has leaned on "friend-shoring," sourcing equipment and materials from allied nations, to rebuild capacity where domestic supply chains remain thin—a strategy Card expects will persist even as US production grows.