SEG Solar: A True US-Born, US-Based, and Bootstrapped Solar Panel Manufacturer

The transcription of the video is below.

Introduction and Jim Wood’s background, journey in the solar industry 

Kerim: Hi, everyone. This is Kerim, Kerim Baran, with SolarAcademy. Today, I am here with Jim Wood, of SEG Solar. Many of you might not have heard of SEG Solar, but SEG Solar is a really unique solar module manufacturer that traverses continents and is one of the most unique success stories in solar that I’ve heard, in the past decade and a half. Today, we’re here with Jim to talk about SEG’S story and offerings, but also a little bit of Jim’s background on how all of this came together. 

So with that, Jim, let me first ask you, how did you end up where you are today? Go as far back as you wish to tell us the story. Just looking at your LinkedIn and hearing from friends that you’ve been in the solar industry for a really long time, almost two decades, like myself for almost a decade and a half. 

You have built a really successful and admirable brand and I would love to hear how this all came together. 

Jim: Yeah, Kerim. Well, I appreciate that opportunity to share the story of SEG, and yeah, so probably about 20, 20-plus years ago, I was working in finance. I was at Merrill Lynch, and I remember reading an analyst report about grid parity and some other things that they were projecting to happen. They had projected it to happen a lot sooner than it really did, but it got me very interested in the solar industry. 

I had previously lived in Germany, and so when I moved to the US when I was 17, came from Germany, I was born in Korea and you know, there was much more solar in Europe at that time when I was younger. We had lots of friends and neighbors that had solar thermal heating systems, that type of thing, and so very used to, I guess, having seen solar much more prevalent in Europe than I did here in the US. 

I was just always interested in it, and so the opportunity came where I had the ability to work with one of my customers at Merrill Lynch to launch a solar company in North Carolina, and so we got our start on the installation side. So I installed lots of solar water heating systems, lots of solar thermal heating systems, radiant floor, that kind of thing. Then obviously, PV became much more common, started installing PV systems as well. It was a kind of a rapid transition from thermal to PV. That started to come down, and so made the leap into PV and worked at several different manufacturers before launching SEG, here in the US. 

Kerim: Yeah, I’ve seen you worked for major brands like Trina and ET Solar in the U.S. market, and that’s after your working as an installer. So you’ve kind of like worked up and down the value chain in many different parts.

Evolution of SEG Solar: Sales & Trading, Contract Manufacturing, JVs, Factories in US & Asia 

Then you guys launched SEG around 2017, is that correct? 

Jim: So that’s about right, about seven and a half years ago. Time flies by. We’re approaching almost eight years at this point, but our Founder, June Juka, came to me. We were working at ET together, and he had a plan to launch a module company here in the US and asked me to come with them, so a number of us actually ended up following June over and launching SEG here in the US. 

As you kind of look at the team over at SEG, you’ll see that a lot of us worked at other module manufacturers together. 

Kerim: Got it. And so how has the company evolved since the early days? Were you focused initially in the utility sector, or resi and C&I? Were you manufacturing? Were you importing? How did that evolution happen? How does that compare to what you guys do today? 

Jim: Yeah. It’s been a fun ride. We grew very quickly. And so when we initially launched here in the US, you could say we’re almost set up as a trading company. We have a lot in common to what trading companies look like. We partnered with an existing module manufacturer, and we produced and sold modules under the SEG name, so we’ve never sold modules for anybody else. They’ve always been SEG modules. 

However, we did partner with another module company, and so we leveraged their contract manufacturing until we were able to start doing JVs. And then once we started doing JVs, we continued to grow, and now we have our own factories, both here in the US and in Indonesia. 

Kerim: Were the JVs also in Asia, or outside of the US initially? 

Jim: Yes. 

Kerim: Yeah. 

Jim: So we’ve a long history of working out of Indonesia. And so we originally did JVs in Indonesia. We actually did a JV in Thailand as well, and we produced modules under those JVs in both Thailand and Indonesia. As of today, we have about 105 acres of land in Indonesia. On that 105 acres, we’re actually building out some additional cell capacity today. We’re building out additional module capacity today, and we’ll also build ingot and wafer probably sometime. We’ll break ground on ingot and wafer sometime mid to late next year. So our capacity in Indonesia is going to go to 5 gigawatts of module, 5 gigawatts of cell, and then, obviously, we have a 2 gigawatt factory in Houston, Texas. 

Kerim: Is most of that production going into the U.S. market or any other markets outside of the U.S. market?

Jim: Yes, so US is our largest market. So we’re focused, this is where we go. I have a philosophy that know you don’t fly over business to get more business. But that being said, our second largest market would be Spain. So we do a lot of business in Spain. We do some business in the EU. We’ve actually sold modules to China as well. 

In Indonesia, there’s a domestic content market there, so we do participate in the Indonesian market as well. And so we are growing our footprint, but the US is the majority of our business. 

Keys to SEG Solar’s Success 

Kerim: I mean, this is a major volume you’re talking about gigawatts. And so one thing that people used to ask us back in my CivicSolar days, my old company that I told you about, where we were an essentially web-enabled distribution platform. There were many other distribution platforms, and people would ask, what gives you the right to carve the market share that you did to us in our little niche part of the distribution? 

We would say, just working smart, working hard. You guys have done something similar at a much more important and much bigger segment of the market, which is at large scale, large utility-scale solar panel segment, mostly utility, I assume, is your market. So what was the key to your success in getting to the heights that you have? 

The other thing that I know from our previous conversations is you’ve done this with almost bootstrap capital, right, on your own. So can you tell us a little bit about like what’s the key to success in carving the market share that you guys did? 

Jim: I think it’s, number one, trust with your customers. Obviously, I’ve worked in the industry a long time. Our Founder and COO and June has been in the industry for a long time. Our chief legal officer, our whole team has been in the industry for an exceptionally long period of time, and we brought customers with us. We were, I think, at the right place at the right time. There were some trade issues going on. There were some supply constraints going on in the market, and because we were so heavily focused on Indonesia, we actually had no interruption where many module companies were having interruptions of deliveries. They weren’t able to fill all their orders. 

We’ve actually over the last seven and a half – eight years at this point, continued to deliver to the U.S. market without interruption, and so we maintained our existing customers, and we’ve kind of continued to grow. So I would say, what’s really unique about SEG is we again, I’ve worked at top 3 in capacity module company as well as one little bit further down the chain from that, but we didn’t do a whole lot of repeat business. When I was at those companies, we did large transactions, and then maybe a few more years would go by, and then maybe you do another large transaction. 

What I really find with SEG is we work with a set of customers, and those customers come back to us and buy from us again because A) we deliver on time, and we’ve never had any interruption too. We’re a US-based company so I have to value and honor my contracts. I can’t not deliver. 

My assets are here in the US. We have a factory here in the US, and so we have to honor all of our contracts. I’m very proud of that. I think that shows a high level of integrity from us as a company, but there are other manufacturers that don’t have to deliver, or they can change your price. They can do other things. We can’t do that. Again, our customers have a lot of trust with us, and most of the time come back, or if they go away, they end up coming back because they appreciate the consistency, and the price never changes with us. 

SEG Solar’s Customer Mix 

Kerim: Your customers being mostly medium to large-size US-based developers, I mean, most of your customers. Obviously, you have customers in Europe and Asia and other markets as well, but is that a right categorization for your main customer base? 

Jim: Yeah. So we have a few large utilities that we work with. We have a few large IPPs that we work with. Those have continued to grow over time. We have a presence in the residential space. So when you look at the top 3 players in that market segment on residential, we actually sell to all three of those. 

When you look at commercial, I think we have a pretty good balance across all segments of the solar industry. Majority of our business is utility. I mean, that is true for us, it’s true for most of the suppliers in the marketplace. We need the utility-scale business to keep the facilities running, to keep costs down, to achieve scale, but we also are opportunistic and when there’s an opportunity in residential and commercial, we’re able to make a little bit more margin in those segments, and which keeps us profitable and growing business. 

SEG Solar’s New Factory in Houston, TX and Expansion Plans Over The Coming Years 

Kerim: Yeah. You mentioned your presence in the US. Obviously, you guys were operating in the US. You’ve incorporated in the US and you grew the company originally from here, but now you guys are making an investment in building a factory in the Texas area in the State of Texas. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Jim: Yeah. So a little bit, maybe three years ago we began the process of looking to build a facility here in the US. Again, our concerns were trade issues, and we figured that they would only get worse over time and we’ve continued to see that. So this was before the IRA. This was before the manufacturing incentives were there, and so we looked at building a facility in Texas. Texas made the most sense for us because 1) you quote Gretzky, “Where the puck is going to be, not where it’s at.” So I mean, the numbers really showed that Texas was going to be where the utility market is. 

The residential market in Texas has continued to grow. We still have lots of Central US and Southeast, and so we looked for a site in Texas. We bought an existing facility. Then the IRA happened, and we decided that we would, instead of building an 800 megawatt facility, we built a 2 gigawatt facility that we could scale up. If there is demand, we can scale that facility up and add a few more gigawatts there. Right now, our facility, that’s opening in August the 8th of 2024, which is coming up really here soon, we’ll open that 2 gig facility in Houston, Texas. 

Kerim: Great, great. That’s very impressive. 

Jim: It’s a 60-million-dollar investment into the local economy, and so we are excited about that. I do like the business-friendliness of Texas. I do like the fact that when you think of Texas historically, it’s always been an energy state, whether that was oil, whether that was wind, but now it’s solar. Houston and Texas, when I think of those two regions or areas, I think of energy, and solar obviously, is an important part of that energy mix, moving forward. So we’re grateful to be in that market. 

Kerim: Yeah. For sure. What is next after this? I mean, you guys have achieved so much. 

Jim: Yeah. So again, as we’ve grown, we’ve obviously, leveraged contract manufacturers, then moved on to JVs and then building our own facilities out. We’re expanding our production outside of the US still. We are currently building out an additional 5 gigs of module, 5 gigs of cell, and 5 gigs of ingot and wafer in Indonesia. We acquired about 105 acres, and so we’re building out a fully, vertically-integrated campus there in Indonesia for us. Again, that facility will serve the local market as well as the US. We’re continuing to expand there. 

I would say that starting in 2026, 2027, we’re going to look at expanding our presence here in the US as well so we do have plans to open a cell manufacturing facility sometime in 2027 or early 2028, I think, realistically, is when it will happen. The election could potentially slow us down or speed us up a little bit there, but it really depends on the outcome of the election. Our plans are currently to build a cell facility in the US as well. 

Advantages of Being a US-born and US-based Solar Panel Manufacturer

Kerim: So you guys being based in the US also makes you kind of unique. What are some advantages that come with being born and managed out of the US versus other major players in the market?

Jim: Yeah. So I would say that the biggest thing is all of our decisions are made here, and so when I was at other module companies, you would have to escalate to your country manager and it would go to the head of state global sales before it ever made its way to maybe the CEO, or whoever was making the decisions at the company. 

So some of those, I guess, answers would take weeks at points where you couldn’t either mobilize on a solution or fix a problem, or agree to a transaction, or agree to fix something, maybe that needed to be fixed. Those decisions were not centralized here in the US, and so they took time for them to be made. 

With SEG, obviously, we think about what we’re doing, and we’re not super reactive or anything like that. We want to be very, very strategic in our decision-making, but we’re able to take in that information, and within a very reasonable amount of time, come back to our customers, with the decision. Most of those decisions can be made by myself. Sometimes, we’ll run them together as a committee and run through some solutions together, but those decisions are made here locally, and you don’t have to wait for somebody else in another country, in another time zone, to come back to you with the decision, that might be days, weeks, or months down the road.

Kerim: Makes sense.

More on SEG’s Unique Operational Philosophy & Culture 

Kerim: What allowed SEG to be this successful? I mean, I’m still amazed by the fact that you guys were able to build to this scale without too much outside capital or going public. I mean, there are so many large panel manufacturers, mostly in China, but elsewhere too, and they all struggle with profitability from time to time because the market, you know, in my experience, every two to three years, the balance of supply and demand shifts, and those times can become really stressful for players. I guess you guys have just sailed through those. 

Jim: Yeah, so I think it’s just been we’ve been very fortunate, obviously, with the current trade case, with the current AD/CVD case, with the current bifacial exemption 201, obviously, for us. Indonesia is not part of that trade case. 

Obviously, what’s different about us is we’re US-owned and US-based. We’re not taking any incentives. We’re not doing any of those things, outside of the IRA. So obviously, we are participating in 45X with the IRA. We need that incentive to help make our facility in Texas make economic sense, but we’ve grown with discipline. If things aren’t profitable, we don’t do them. I think we’ve been small enough to remain very nimble, and we’re large enough to compete at scale with larger manufacturers. 

Again, we do what we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it, and so we have a track record of delivering on time at the contracted price. I think that’s what keeps people coming back. Again, as we get new customers such as attrition with other suppliers, and so we’ve continued to grow. Every year, we’ve done more, we’ve been profitable every year we’ve been in business, and yeah, we don’t take on a lot of debt. We essentially almost have no debt. We do fund our growth organically. 

Eventually, we’ll get to a point where we can’t do that, and we do have to potentially look at taking on some debt whether we go public, whether we take on institutional debt, or anything like that, and so we will eventually have to do that at a certain point, just to continue to grow. Our philosophy has always been around not having a whole lot of debt, so we’re kind of the Dave Ramsey of solar. 

Kerim: I like that a lot. In my career I’ve read quite a bit of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger wisdom and they also advise on operating on the simple economics, but make money, save some, spend less than you make, reinvest, and keep discipline. 

Jim: Yeah. That’s true. 

Kerim: Talking about that, let’s think a little bit about the culture of the company and specifically, I’d like to talk a little bit about your culture, your personal culture of maybe somewhat unique lifestyle, which you were sharing with me. I wouldn’t mind our audience hearing that because I think there’s a lot of alignment between what you do and how you live and what you do for work and things you produce. 

Jim: Yeah, I live on a farm. We grow a lot of our own food. I mean, we’re not 100% self-sufficient, but we have greenhouses, we have dairy goats, we have bees, we have hogs. We raise a lot of our own meat. We grow a lot of our own food. We process the meat on-site. We cure our meats. It’s definitely a different type of lifestyle, but I think it does also translate into how I do business and how I live. I don’t have a huge fancy house. I’m not driving a new Lamborghini or anything like that. I’ve got an old Subaru out in the parking lot. We live a different lifestyle. I live a different lifestyle. I think when you look at the culture of SEG, you know we don’t overspend. Everyone treats it like it’s their money because it is. 

A lot of our seed capital originated with one of our C-level executives, and so we are very thoughtful when we do spend money. I mean, we still fly – we still shop for tickets. We still shop hotels and stay in reasonably-priced places. I don’t have a lot of expensive dinners or anything like that. 

Kerim: Not like the Merrill Lynch days. 

Jim: No, no, no, no. We’re very fiscally responsible. We treat it like our money because it is, and that’s really important to us. Then I think that’s another reason why you see us as growing. We just continue to put all of those profits back into the company instead of our own pockets, and so we’ve continued to grow the business, and it’s why we’ve been able to be as successful as we have here in the U.S. market. 

Kerim: What a beautiful story. 

Jim: I’d be happy to talk about culture, too, in that the workplace culture is really focused on, we’re almost like we have a lot of the same feelings of kind of still of a startup. We’re still growing. We’re growing rapidly. I mean, every time I look, there’s an announcement for five new employees here, 10 new employees here, and so we’re continuing to grow, but it still has a lot of the same feels as a startup, and family-owned business. 

Everyone knows everybody very well. Again, most of us, especially our core group at SEG, we’ve all worked together at one point or another, whether we worked together at this module company or that module company. We’re colleagues at different module companies, and we all came together here at SEG, and we’re going to pull that from that talent. So I’m grateful that I get to work with a lot of friends and old colleagues from years ago, today, and more and more join us over time. 

Kerim: Great. Well, thanks for sharing that as well, so people know. Here’s a growing US-based, US-born, US-managed module manufacturer in the solar industry, probably looking for more people to join. So this is a great resource and story for them to hear as well. 

How to Reach Out to SEG Solar 

Jim, thanks a lot for sharing everything you did. Any last closing words? 

Jim: Well, I would say, we’re always grateful to our customers, and we want to always thank our existing customers, and we’re always eager to have new customers, and so feel free to reach out at any time. I’m very accessible, whether you reach out to me on LinkedIn, or you have my contact information. 

I would say that most of our customers know who I am and reach out, at least socially, and I don’t micromanage my employees or anything like that. They manage their own accounts, but I enjoy talking to our customers, whether it’s a residential company doing five installs a month, or one install a month, or a large utility-scale business. I still enjoy getting out there. 

My history and my background is installation and so I am a former NABCEP-certified installer. I very much enjoy hearing what’s going on out in the field, and what problems, what’s new, what’s not new, what’s working, what’s not working. I still get really involved with a lot of the construction aspects just to stay ahead of what’s going on, and so I do appreciate those conversations. So reach out anytime. 

Kerim: Well, thank you. Thank you for that offer, Jim. I’m sure our audience will appreciate that. I personally, would love to be able to tap more into that brain and pull out as much information as possible because that’s what we’re trying to do, Nico and I and John with SolarAcademy is bringing out more of that sharing to the world to accelerate distributed clean energy for the world. Thank you. 

Jim: Thank you. I appreciate the time.

Kerim: Talk to you soon. All right.