Tesla starts work on $10.1B Texas solar plant in 100 GW push

Earthworks are already moving at the Project Crystal Sun site outside Houston. Tesla watcher S.E. Robinson Jr. flew over the property on November 9, 2026 and reported massive clearings, equipment staging areas, an old homestead pressed into service and crews leveling a large stretch of land.

The numbers are enormous. Tesla's proposed area covers roughly 3,000 acres, the plant will manufacture everything from silicon ingots to finished solar panels, and it comes with approximately 9,712 permanent jobs. Construction is expected to wrap in 2028, with commercial operations starting in the first quarter of 2029.

The factory is a full vertical stack: wafer and ingot manufacturing, coating, metallization and printing lines, cell testing and quality control, automation and material handling, cleanrooms, chemical storage and delivery, plus utility and environmental systems. Tesla puts the total direct and indirect economic impact at about $6.4 billion in state and local taxes and a roughly $107 billion lift to Texas GDP.

Analysts see the $10.1 billion build as a foundation stone rather than the whole 100 GW Musk has targeted. Solar industry analyst Finlay Colville estimated a fully integrated 100 GW of US capacity might need on the order of $16 billion once equipment cost declines are factored in.

Joe Hennessy, market research analyst at PV Tech Research, called it the biggest single-site bet he has seen in US manufacturing. He pointed to Qcells's Cartersville facility, which cost around $2.5 billion for 3.3 GW of integrated PERC capacity, and said the scale suggests Crystal Sun could top 10 GW on one site.