T1 Energy G2 Austin

Overview

The Missing Link in US Solar

Select a link in the chain above to show its suppliers in the ring.

T1 Energy (NYSE: TE) is building G2 Austin, a TOPCon solar cell plant on about 100 leased acres at the Sandow Lakes megasite near Rockdale in Milam County. Phase 1 is 2.1 GW, with first cells targeted for Q1 2027 and capital spending now put at about $510M including contingency; the full plant is about 5 GW, about $850M and up to 1,800 jobs. Yates Construction is general contractor and SSOE Group the project engineer.

The US has plenty of module assembly and little cell production. T1's own G1 Dallas plant in Wilmer assembles about 5 GW of modules a year, 2.79 GW in 2025, from imported cells. G2 Austin makes those cells in Texas, from Hemlock polysilicon and Corning wafers made in Michigan, closing the chain from polysilicon to module on US soil.

China

Out From Under Trina

T1 is the former FREYR Battery, which bought Trina Solar's US module plant in December 2024 and renamed itself in 2025. That left a Chinese company as a large shareholder and lender, a problem under the foreign-entity-of-concern rules that now govern the 45X manufacturing credit. In December 2025 T1 repaid much of the Trina debt, removed Trina's right to appoint an officer, moved the cell patents to Evervolt, which licenses them to T1, and bought cells from a supplier certified as non-FEOC. In July 2026 it bought the TOPCon patents from Evervolt outright for $135M.

The cell equipment has not been named. T1 says the Phase 1 equipment is designed and shipping to US ports; the dataset lists the diffusion furnaces, printers, laser and wet-bench systems as undisclosed.

The supplier ring

The G2 Austin Supplier Ring

Each supplier placed by distance from G2 Austin and what it supplies.

• United States
• Europe

The ring maps 32 suppliers, 16 of them generic or undisclosed. The named ones are domestic: Hemlock and Corning upstream, NEXTPower frames from Fremont, Air Liquide and Linde gases from Houston, Quanta electrical work, and on the Sandow site, Oncor's interconnection, the Sandow municipal utility district's water and Xebec as host.

The offtake wedge is the demand side: a three-year contract for at least 900 MW of modules with Treaty Oak Clean Energy of Austin and 641 MW for Clearway, both specifying G2 cells.

Shared across anchors

Suppliers Shared With Other Texas Anchors

The most overlap is with Tesla Megapack Brookshire 6, Samsung Taylor 5, Tesla Giga Texas 5. Yates is also general contractor for Samsung Taylor; Hemlock is the likely polysilicon source for SpaceX's solar cells at Bastrop. Milam County water serves G2 Austin, Samsung Taylor through the Sandow Water Project and SB Energy's Stargate Milam campus from the same aquifer system.

Constraints

Cost and Schedule

Phase 1 capital rose from an original $400M to $425M range to about $510M, a 20% contingency that T1 attributes to labor and materials pressure from Texas data center construction. First cells slipped from late 2026 to Q1 2027.

The credits are the other exposure. The plant's economics depend on 45X and on keeping Chinese ownership, debt and equipment below the foreign-entity thresholds; the undisclosed equipment rows are where that question is still open.

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• Sandow Lakes / Xebec Megasite
• US 79 Data Center Corridor
• Samsung Taylor
• SpaceX Bastrop Complex
• Tesla Megapack Brookshire