- Heliene has launched the 108HC All-Black module, which it describes as the first fully American solar panel for the residential market — using U.S.-made polysilicon, ingots, wafers, and cells.
- Sunrun, the country’s largest residential solar and storage provider, has signed a purchase agreement for the module for projects nationwide.
- The deal ties rooftop solar’s hardest-hit segment to the domestic supply chain push, as tariffs and foreign-entity sourcing rules reshape equipment economics.
Heliene, the Minnesota-based module maker, has rolled out what it calls a first for the U.S. rooftop market: a residential solar panel built on an American supply chain from silicon to cells. The 108HC All-Black module, announced September 29, combines American-made polysilicon, ingots, wafers, and solar cells, with final module assembly in the United States — “reconnecting critical stages of the solar supply chain with U.S. manufacturing after more than a decade,” the company said.
The launch comes with a customer attached. Sunrun — which Heliene describes as America’s largest provider of residential battery storage and solar systems — has executed a purchase agreement for the 108HC All-Black module for residential solar projects across the country. In a market where residential demand has been battered by the end of the federal homeowner tax credit, a volume commitment from the segment’s biggest buyer is the kind of demand signal that makes upstream investment possible.
The supply chain behind the panel
Heliene’s claim rests on a network of domestic suppliers the company has been assembling for years. Per Solar Power World, the chain runs through Hemlock for polysilicon, Corning for ingots and wafers, and Suniva for cells, with Heliene operating assembly facilities in Minnesota and sharing module output at Corning’s assembly facility in Phoenix (American Panel Solutions). The company adds the caveat that globally sourced components are incorporated “where appropriate” — a reminder that no U.S. module is yet 100 percent domestic. Solar glass, in particular, remains a bottleneck: Heliene has recently begun testing American-made glass, and Stewart Glass started production of 3.2-mm front-pane solar glass at its Logan, Ohio facility in spring 2026, the first fully operational solar glass plant in the country.
This is not Heliene’s first attempt at a domestic-content flagship. In March 2025, the company partnered with Suniva and Corning on a module it billed as having the highest domestic content in the U.S. market. The 108HC extends that strategy specifically to rooftops, backed by about 1.3 GW of annual U.S. module capacity, according to TaiyangNews.
Why Sunrun wants American panels
Sunrun’s procurement chief framed the deal as resilience strategy. Nick Smallwood, the company’s Senior Vice President of Global Procurement, said:
“We applaud Heliene for bringing more U.S. solar manufacturing online. Investment in the production of domestic modules strengthens supply-chain resilience and supports Sunrun’s strategy of maintaining a diversified, domestic, supplier base.”
Heliene’s Chief Commercial Officer David Reasenberg tied the agreement directly to continued investment:
“Working with Sunrun allows us to invest in the domestic supply chain for rooftop solar. Through this purchase agreement, more of the materials and manufacturing that go into powering American homes can happen here at home, strengthening our energy security while also keeping rooftop solar affordable for American families.”
There is hard economics underneath the patriotism. Tariffs on imported solar equipment have raised the landed cost of foreign modules, while foreign-entity-of-concern sourcing rules and domestic-content adders increasingly reward — or require — U.S.-made equipment in projects claiming federal credits. For residential installers, who operate on thinner margins than utility-scale developers and just lost the homeowner credit that drove a decade of growth, equipment cost is existential.
A market in transition
The timing is worth pausing on. Residential solar is in its toughest stretch in years: the Section 25D homeowner credit expired for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025, pushing the market toward leases and power purchase agreements where the credit is claimed by the system owner instead. Early 2026 brought a visible shakeout — smaller installers closing or consolidating, and national players like Sunrun leaning harder into third-party-owned systems where the commercial credit under Section 48E still applies. Installers that survive the transition will be the ones that can hold costs down, and a domestic supply chain insulated from tariff shocks is one way to do it.
That shift also changes what equipment buyers value. In a lease model, the system owner — Sunrun, in this case — holds the asset for decades and claims the federal credit itself, which raises the bar on module bankability, warranty strength, and documented domestic content. A purchase agreement with a U.S. manufacturer whose supply chain can be audited from polysilicon to module checks all three boxes at once. It also hedges against the next round of trade enforcement: with anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases continuing to reshape import economics, locking in domestic supply is as much risk management as patriotism.
Compared with utility-scale manufacturing announcements — ARRAY’s $50 million tracker factory in Albuquerque, SEG Solar’s HJT line in Texas, TOYO’s $240 million in binding U.S. supply agreements — Heliene’s launch is smaller in dollars but arguably more significant in structure. It is one of the first attempts to pull the full silicon chain, not just final assembly, back into the U.S. for the residential segment specifically.
Whether “fully American” panels can compete on price remains the open question. Domestic polysilicon, wafers, and cells all cost more to make than their Southeast Asian equivalents, and that premium has to land somewhere — in the 45X manufacturing credits, in tariff avoidance, or in the customer’s bill. The Sunrun purchase agreement is a bet that the math works. The rest of the rooftop industry will be watching the numbers.
