Tesla’s massive factory in South Buffalo, originally built to manufacture solar panels, now has Chinese-made solar panels installed on its own roof.
State officials recently confirmed this fact after initially refusing to disclose the information. When Investigative Post submitted a Freedom of Information request, officials claimed the manufacturer’s identity was a “trade secret.” Only after an appeal did they reveal the truth.
The photovoltaic panels that blanket almost one-third of the roof of the factory are sourced by LONGi Green Energy Technology, a Chinese company ranked among the top solar module makers globally.
Tesla will roll out this coverage to the whole roof late this year, so it is a system that can produce about 7.5 megawatts of electricity—enough to power about 30 percent of the building.
Although Tesla has underwritten the projected $10 million cost of these panels, New York taxpayers have shelled out $959 million to build and equip the factory itself. This finding reveals Tesla’s bumpy affair with solar manufacturing since it bought SolarCity in 2016.
Tesla’s Solar Outsourcing
Tesla now sells both residential and commercial solar panels and its Solar Roof product—discrete power-generating shingles that resemble normal roofing material. Surprisingly, the company doesn’t make the panels it sells; accounts have it that it imports them from a Korean maker. The Solar Roof tiles, once fully produced in Buffalo, now incorporate foreign-made parts that are merely assembled at the Buffalo facility.
This outsourcing pattern reveals Tesla’s struggles in the solar industry. When Tesla purchased SolarCity, it inherited SolarCity’s acquisition of Silevo, a solar module manufacturer, along with the agreement to occupy the Buffalo factory. However, Tesla later sidelined Silevo and instead partnered with Panasonic to manufacture solar modules for its Solar Roof product.
The original vision had been for Silevo and SolarCity to manufacture traditional solar panels in Buffalo. This was later replaced by Tesla and Panasonic’s plan to produce the aesthetically appealing Solar Roof, which was expected to spark additional development and attract other clean energy companies to Buffalo.
Reality fell short of these ambitions. As Investigative Post reported previously, Tesla struggled with scaling Solar Roof production.
These difficulties eventually led Panasonic to relocate its 400 Buffalo jobs to Malaysia. When explaining this move to federal regulators, Panasonic cited decreased demand for its solar cells “due to Tesla and other companies importing solar cells from China.”
Uyghur Labor Law Impacts Tesla’s Solar Production
In 2020, shortly before Panasonic’s departure from Buffalo, pv magazine published evidence that Solar Roof tiles were arriving at customer homes from China, routed through California.
The current situation shows Tesla outsourcing both the solar panels it uses and sells, while using foreign-made components for its Solar Roof product, which is assembled in Buffalo. According to energy trade group Wood Mackenzie, only about 3,000 Solar Roofs had been installed as of last spring—far below Tesla’s projections for the product.
Beyond Solar Roof assembly, Tesla currently uses the Buffalo factory to manufacture charging equipment for its electric vehicles and repair car batteries. The facility also houses a substantial team of data analysts working on programming for Tesla’s self-driving vehicle technology.
Solar expert Johnny Weiss, co-founder of Solar Energy International (a nonprofit training workers for the solar industry), explains that Tesla’s use of LONGi modules makes practical sense. “Most of the world’s [photovoltaic] modules are manufactured in China,” Weiss noted. “[LONGi] has been the market leader in manufacturing solar panels for a long time. Obviously, most countries find it extremely difficult to compete with Chinese manufacturing.”
But Tesla’s relationship with LONGi has brought headaches. LONGi has been the target of import restrictions under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act—a late 2021 federal law that bans imports of products made in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region due to reports of forced labor against the Uyghur Muslim minority. Investigative Post previously reported that the restrictions had caused production delays for Tesla’s Solar Roof.
LONGi, Tesla, and the Shadow of Forced Labor in Solar Manufacturing
A December 2020 investigation by Buzzfeed News uncovered China’s rapid construction of more than 100 steel-frame factories in the region where people imprisoned in reeducation camps were forced to work. In 2022, Reuters reported that U.S. officials blocked shipments of solar products from LONGi and other companies under the forced labor ban.
Elissa Pierce, a solar technology researcher with Wood Mackenzie, explained that many large solar suppliers, including LONGi, encountered problems at U.S. borders during the early enforcement of the forced labor ban.
However, once these companies established paper trails proving compliance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection released their shipments.
Pierce noted that some manufacturers adjusted by shifting their supply chains to use non-Chinese components, while others began sourcing materials from outside the Xinjiang region to avoid U.S. Customs blockades. Large suppliers now “are faring relatively well with minimal detentions and faster release times,” according to Pierce.
Whether LONGi ever used forced labor remains unclear. The company does have connections to the Xinjiang region—as recently as last year, a study by Sheffield Hallam University and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice found that LONGi Solar was using materials sourced from companies located in the Xinjiang Uyghur region.
When contacted, a LONGi spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Tesla representatives and CEO Elon Musk likewise offered no response.
Steve Ference, speaking for Fort Schuyler Management Corp. (the state agency owning the factory), said the agency didn’t raise concerns with Tesla about the panels’ origin.
He explained that the agency typically only reviews “professional engineer-stamped drawings” for potential “adverse” impacts to state-owned buildings, adding, “It does not otherwise approve any parts of the project supply chain.”
Nevertheless, until recently, New York officials helped Tesla conceal its relationship with the Chinese company. When Investigative Post began inquiring in November about whether the roof panels were manufactured by Tesla—noting they appeared different from Tesla’s advertised products—Ference declined to answer.
This refusal prompted Investigative Post to file a Freedom of Information Law request in January seeking the manufacturer’s identity and the company that sold the panels to Tesla. In March, the agency claimed any records identifying the manufacturer and vendor constituted a “trade secret.”
Only after the Investigative Post successfully appealed this denial did Fort Schuyler finally reveal LONGi as the manufacturer of the solar panels atop Tesla’s Buffalo factory.
