The agency's Loan Programs Office said the funding would help Qcells build a $2.5 billion facility that will produce solar panels and inputs including cells, ingots and wafers. The factory could produce enough solar panels per year to supply half a million American households, the department said.
The announcement is a win for Qcells, which has warned that tough competition from a flood of cheap imports is threatening U.S. solar factories. The company, a division of South Korea's Hanwha, is among dozens that are seeking to take advantage of incentives in President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act that seek to bolster U.S. production of clean energy components.
Qcells' Cartersville plant has already started producing solar panels since April and the company is on track to produce the subcomponents by the end of the year, Qcells spokesperson Marta Stoepker told Reuters.
The facility will have nearly 2,000 jobs once it is fully operational. The company already has a plant in Dalton, Georgia, that opened in 2019.
"There is an oversupply of artificially cheap panels in our warehouses and it's definitely putting a strain on domestic producers in the United States. So this one is really helpful in terms of navigating some of those headwinds," Stoepker said.
The DOE said the company must satisfy certain financial, legal and other requirements before the loan is finalized.
