New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has ceremonially broken ground on the site of the future SolarCity GigaFactory facility, which will manufacture Silevo solar modules in Buffalo.
The SolarCity facility is expected to have a manufacturing output of more than 1 GW of capacity annually when it reaches full production. The company says the operation will create more than 3,000 jobs in western New York, with nearly 5,000 jobs throughout the state.
SolarCity expects to create over 1,450 direct manufacturing jobs at the new facility and employ more than 2,000 additional workers in the state to provide solar services in the next five years. The governor's office says the facility will create more than 1,400 manufacturing support and service provider jobs in addition to the jobs that SolarCity creates directly.
SolarCity is expected to spend $5 billion over the next decade, in connection with the creation and operation of the facility. New York State will spend a total of $750 million to establish infrastructure, construct the 1.2 million square-foot facility and purchase the required equipment.
The SolarCity GigaFactory will be located at the Buffalo High-Tech Manufacturing Innovation Hub at RiverBend, owned by the State University of New York's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. The factory is scheduled to begin high-volume manufacturing in the first quarter of 2016.
