Solar Manufacturing Company Plans to Open Kentucky Location

A solar panel company has announced plans to build a manufacturing plant in south-central Kentucky. Alabama-based Taggart Solar’s plant in Edmonson County is expected to create about 30 jobs.The company plans to invest $440,000 into an industrial park in Park City and hire at least 30 workers to assemble components into photovoltaic solar panels.Taggart will receive tax incentives for up to $300,000 through the Kentucky Business Investment program. President Dagney Johnson says those incentives helped seal the deal, but there were other elements that attracted her to Edmonson County.“It was a nice icing on the cake, the incentives that we’re getting. It was really just the cooperation level from the state,” she says. “I was very impressed with how much everybody was willing to help each other out, and that’s a community I want to be in.”Johnson says by expanding in Kentucky, she hopes to grow the state’s market for industrial and residential solar panels.“And our whole goal is to make Kentucky the base of the explosion of green energy, renewable energy in the southeast,” she says. “So we’re going to use Kentucky as our hub and spread from there: Tennessee, Georgia, etc.”Edmonson County is partially served by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has generous incentives for solar energy. Johnson says that was part of the company’s attraction to the area, as well as promises of collaboration with local electricity co-ops.