The US Department of Energy (DOE) said it had made a conditional loan guarantee commitment of up to USD 1.45 billion to Qcells to back the South Korean group’s solar manufacturing expansion in Georgia.

The North American unit of Seoul-based Hanwha Solutions Corp last year committed to spending USD 2.31 billion to build an industrial complex for the production of solar ingots, wafers, cells and modules in Cartersville, Bartow County. The investment is part of a USD-2.5-billion plan for a fully-integrated, silicon-based solar supply chain in the US.

The DOE, which has made the guarantee commitment through its Loan Programs Office, said that Qcells should satisfy certain financial, legal and other requirements before a definitive financing deal is reached.

The Cartersville complex was built last year and is already partly operational. Qcells in April completed the site’s construction and aims to boost its annual manufacturing capacity to 3.3 GW next year. The output of the facility will be directed toward the distributed and utility-scale solar markets.

The project is expected to open about 1,200 jobs in the construction phase and support 1,950 full-time jobs once commissioned.

Qcells already has a solar panel factory in Dalton, Georgia, which was opened in 2019 and was last year expanded to over 5.1 GW of manufacturing capacity.