Homeowners who priced solar in 2024 and are pricing it again in 2026 sometimes notice the same word doing more work on their quotes than it used to: American-made. It’s easy to assume that’s marketing, and sometimes it is. But there’s a specific federal mechanism behind why more installers can now actually offer a domestically produced module, and it’s a manufacturing credit, not a consumer one — which matters because most of the other 2026 solar headlines are about credits homeowners lost, not ones that quietly survived.

§25D Is Gone. §45X Is Not — and That Distinction Got Missed a Lot

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA, P.L. 119-21), signed July 4, 2025, repealed the Section 25D Residential Clean Energy Credit and the Section 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit for property placed in service after December 31, 2025 — the changes this site has covered extensively as the end of the 30% homeowner credit. It is a genuinely different piece of the tax code from Section 45X, the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit, and the two shouldn’t be assumed to have moved together just because both are solar-related and both got touched by the same bill.

Section 45X is a production tax credit paid to manufacturers — not buyers — for domestically producing eligible clean energy components: solar cells, wafers, modules, backsheets, polysilicon, inverters, battery cells and modules, and specified critical minerals, each with its own per-unit or percentage credit value. Multiple tax and legal analyses of OBBBA published after the July 2025 signing are consistent on this point: the bill did not repeal 45X. It added guardrails — new domestic-content and material-sourcing rules, and Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions that phase in and disqualify components using material, design, or licensing tied to specified foreign entities beginning after 2025 — but the underlying manufacturing credit for solar, battery, and critical-mineral production remains in place. Wind and coal-related components saw the sharpest OBBBA-driven phase-out timelines; solar manufacturing was not treated the same way.

That’s the mechanism worth understanding before assuming “another tax credit for solar just got cut.” The consumer-facing credit is gone. The credit that subsidizes building the panel in the first place is still running, with new strings attached about whose supply chain qualifies.

What That’s Actually Doing to Domestic Capacity

The clearest evidence that 45X is still functioning as a manufacturing incentive is what’s been built since it took effect under the Inflation Reduction Act. Qcells’ Cartersville, Georgia facility began solar cell production in 2026 and, according to the company and industry trade press covering the ramp-up, is targeted to reach 3.3 gigawatts each of annual ingot, wafer, and cell capacity and 3.5 gigawatts of module capacity by the third quarter of 2026 — described as the first U.S. factory to produce the major stages of a photovoltaic module, from ingot to finished panel, under one roof. Combined with its existing Dalton, Georgia module plant, Qcells’ total U.S. output was projected to reach roughly 8.6 gigawatts by the end of Q3 2026. First Solar, which manufactures cadmium-telluride thin-film panels rather than the silicon-based modules most residential installers quote, operates multiple U.S. factories with a combined nameplate capacity industry sources put at up to 14 gigawatts.

Those are utility-scale capacity figures, and not all of that output ends up on residential rooftops — a meaningful share serves utility and commercial projects. But the same manufacturing base supplies the residential channel, and installers sourcing modules domestically increasingly have real U.S.-made inventory to draw from in a way that wasn’t true a few years ago, when “domestic” module claims were rarer and often referred to final assembly of imported cells rather than integrated domestic production.

Why a Homeowner Would Care, Given They Can’t Claim 45X Directly

Section 45X is not something a homeowner applies for or claims on a return — it flows to the manufacturer, not the buyer. So the reason it shows up in a 2026 quote isn’t a rebate line item; it’s supply and pricing. A manufacturer receiving a per-watt production credit has more room to price competitively against imported modules that, separately, may carry tariff exposure — Section 201 safeguard tariffs, Southeast Asia antidumping and countervailing duties, and an active Section 232 investigation into polysilicon have all been part of the 2026 import cost picture this site has covered elsewhere. A domestically produced module backed by 45X sidesteps a chunk of that exposure, which can make it price-competitive even before accounting for any state or utility preference for domestic content.

There’s also a connection to the Domestic Content Bonus Credit under Section 48E — but that bonus, as covered previously on this site, currently applies to the investment tax credit claimed by third-party owners on lease and PPA systems, not to direct-purchase homeowners, who lost their own federal credit entirely under §25D’s repeal. A homeowner buying a system outright with a domestically manufactured module gets none of that bonus credit directly. What they get is a module that may be less exposed to tariff volatility and, for buyers who care about it, a genuinely American-made product rather than a marketing label attached to imported cells.

What to Ask on a 2026 Quote

  • Ask where the cells and modules are actually made, not just where final assembly happens. “Assembled in the USA” and “cell and module manufactured in the USA” are different supply chains with different tariff and FEOC exposure.
  • Ask whether the module qualifies as domestic content under the Treasury’s Section 48E definitions if a lease or PPA is being considered alongside a cash purchase — that’s where the bonus credit actually applies.
  • Compare pricing, not assumptions. A domestically manufactured module isn’t automatically more expensive than an imported one in 2026’s tariff environment; ask for a side-by-side quote rather than assuming origin dictates cost.
  • Confirm warranty and bankability separately from origin. A newer domestic factory’s production history is shorter than an established importer’s — origin and manufacturer track record are two different questions worth asking both of.

Section 45X won’t appear as a line item on a homeowner’s utility bill or tax return. But it’s a real reason the module options on a 2026 quote look different from what was available even two years ago, and it’s worth knowing that difference traces back to a manufacturing credit that survived a bill that eliminated the credit homeowners themselves used to count on.