Arizona Solar Dreams Collapse: Meyer Burger Abandons Plant, Hundreds Lose Jobs

After barely a year of operations, Meyer Burger‘s shiny new solar panel factory in Goodyear, Arizona is dead. The Swiss company pulled the plug in May 2025, sending 283 workers to the unemployment line. So much for American solar manufacturing dreams.

The plant opened just last June with big promises. It could pump out 400 megawatts of solar panels annually, with plans to eventually hit 1.5 gigawatts. Meyer Burger bet heavy on U.S. manufacturing incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act. They thought they’d found the golden ticket. They were wrong.

Meyer Burger bet heavy on IRA incentives. They thought they’d found the golden ticket. They were wrong.

Reality hit hard and fast. The company couldn’t compete with dirt-cheap Asian imports flooding the market. Their fancy heterojunction technology modules? Too expensive. Nobody cared about the made-in-America sticker when Chinese panels cost half as much.

The warning signs were there. Meyer Burger had already scrapped plans for a second facility in Colorado. Then D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments yanked a massive 5-gigawatt supply contract in late 2024. That deal was supposed to be their lifeline. The company had raised over $250 million to fulfill it. Oops.

By the time shutdown talks started, Meyer Burger was already wrestling with bondholders about restructuring. The company’s financial crisis deepened after abandoning its former Freiburg facility to focus on the Arizona site in January 2024. Financial troubles weren’t just an American problem either. The company was bleeding money on both sides of the Atlantic.

For Goodyear, this stings. The Phoenix suburb had welcomed the facility as a cornerstone of its green economy push. This closure adds to the loss of renewable energy jobs that had been growing globally to 13.7 million as of 2022. Local officials probably popped champagne when construction started in 2021. Those 250-plus manufacturing jobs were supposed to be just the beginning. Now they’re gone, along with any expansion dreams.

The collapse represents another black eye for U.S. solar manufacturing ambitions. Despite billions in government incentives, American factories keep losing to Asian competitors. Meyer Burger’s Arizona adventure lasted less than twelve months from ribbon-cutting to pink slips. The shutdown disrupts supply chains that depended on the factory’s output for various solar projects across the Southwest.

The broader pattern is clear. High-profile solar bankruptcies and closures keep piling up. Policy makers can throw all the subsidies they want at domestic manufacturing. But when your panels cost twice as much as the competition, customers will buy elsewhere. Economics beats patriotism every time.