President Biden gave a speech yesterday at Flex Ltd.’s manufacturing facility in Columbia, S.C., where Enphase Energy Inc. has partnered with Flex to ship the energy technology company’s first IQ Microinverters manufactured in the United States.
Enphase is a global supplier of microinverter-based solar and battery systems based in Fremont, Calif. Microinverters are used to convert the DC power generated by solar panels into AC power.
“Jobs that used to go to Mexico, India, Romania and China are now coming home to South Carolina… and today, they are shipping the first microinverters made in America,” said the President during his speech at the facility.
The partnership with Flex is the first of Enphase’s three contract manufacturing partnerships in the U.S., which the company says were enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act. Each of the three manufacturing facilities are estimated to represent $20 million in capital investment, totaling $60 million across the U.S.
According to Enphase, the South Carolina facility, owned and operated by Flex, has the capacity to produce 18 million microinverters per year. The company claims Enphase manufacturing capacity will enable 1 million new solar homes per year in the U.S.
“Enphase is proud to be a leader in expanding the domestic manufacturing of clean energy products while bringing back high-technology jobs and supporting the growth of our business. We thank Flex for its commitment as a valuable partner globally over the past 15 years, and we are pleased to expand our partnership in the United States to better service our customers with local manufacturing,” said Badri Kothandaraman, president and CEO of Enphase Energy.
