Las Vegas solar manufacturing facility to triple operations after federal funding

Nevada continues to transition to clean energy, a particularly crucial process for a city like Las Vegas, that is among the fastest-warming in the country.

Tyler Deogny drilled the first metal tube for Unimacts, a solar manufacturing company which makes parts that allow solar panels to operate.

A valley native, Deogny didn’t anticipate he’d wind up working in solar energy, but credits the job at the company’s Las Vegas manufacturing facility, off Arville Street and Tropicana Avenue, with changing his life.

“It’s a blessing to know that what we’re doing…these are going to solar fields that are going to power people’s homes and lives and future,” he said. “It’s very rewarding to know that these tubes that we drill make an impact on the future for energy.”

Deogny was on hand last Wednesday as Nevada Congresswoman Susie Lee (D-Las Vegas) announced that Unimacts would create 200 new clean energy jobs, effectively tripling the number of tubes it’s able to produce, as a result of funding from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Lee said companies like Unimacts are helping Nevada make the transition to clean energy, a particularly crucial process for a city like Las Vegas, that is among the fastest-warming in the country.

“Nevada is definitely solidifying itself as the epicenter for solar, but we also have wind and geothermal energy as well,” she said. “We have the natural resources and we’re taking advantage of it.”

The company is drilling 30,000 tubes a month, and expects to produce three times that amount soon, with the addition of a future facility in Sloan, roughly 18 miles south of the city, CEO Alan Hays said.

“For me, it’s diversifying our economy which is so incredibly important because Nevada is so at risk, without a diversified economy, of economic downturns,” Lee said. “It’s just solidifying Nevada’s role in the clean energy economy.”

During a tour of the facility Wednesday, Lee was joined by Hays, who spoke about how the company also employs people from the local correctional facility, giving them a second shot in life.

Unimacts has been producing solar components for roughly a decade, and also produces wind energy components at its plant in Spain.

For Hays, who grew up in Newcastle in the northeast of England, clean energy is personal. Both of his grandfathers died from pneumoconiosis, commonly referred to as the black lung disease.

“I saw the transition over the years,” he said. “Coal miners were out of jobs for a little while, but then you got a whole lot of better jobs after the fact,…it was tremendous to see.”

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