The investment will allow OMCO to manufacture its Origin Tracker Torque Tubes at OMCO’s Indiana and Arizona locations.
OMCO Solar, an OEM manufacturer of solar tracker and mounting solutions for the community, commercial, and utility-scale markets, announced that it has invested an additional $5 million into its solar manufacturing capabilities, bringing its total investment in equipment and tooling to $75 million.
According to the company, the investment will be used to enable the manufacturing of its OMCO Origin Tracker Torque Tubes at OMCO’s Indiana and Arizona locations. In total, the company has 7 GW of true U.S. manufacturing capacity across four locations: Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio. OMCO manufactures its own torque tubes in order to maintain domestic control of the supply chain and reduce distribution costs. Since torque tubes can be among of the most expensive pieces of a tracker system, OMCO said that its tubes have saved up to 25% of the tracker cost in some cases.
In addition to cost savings, OMCO also credits its factory-direct approach in allowing the company have exceptionally short lead times, sharing that the company can provide mounting or racking solutions for any project in as little as six to eight weeks.
In application, the Origin Tracker Torque Tubes are part of the system that allows the company’s Origin Tracker to operate long module rows effectively by minimizing gaps over posts, between modules and at row ends. The company shares that the trackers can support up to 120 modules in a row.
“Torque tubes are the backbone of the solar tracker, and OMCO Solar is proud to be the only tracker manufacturer to make its own in the U.S.,” said Gary Schuster, president and CEO of OMCO Holdings.
In 2021, OMCO shipped 1 GW of its factory-direct products, which were installed installed in 30 states. Combined with the 8 GW of prior contracted hardware, OMCO Solar now has delivered over 9 GW to the market worldwide.
Early in 2021, OMCO Solar announced that it would to donate racking equipment to help complete a 1 MW solar project and adjacent training lab at the University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana.
