QCells Begins Georgia Factory Expansion
By Christian Roselund
QCells North America has begun preparing the site for a second factory building at its production site in Dalton in the U.S. state of Georgia. The new building will host the capacity to assemble an additional 1.4 gigawatts of solar PV modules per year, with initial operation planned for the second half of 2023. This adds to QCells’ existing 1.7 gigawatts of production capacity at the site. QCells will host around one quarter of the nation’s total solar module manufacturing capacity when this facility and another under construction by First Solar are complete in 2023.
The modules made in the factory will feature high-efficiency cells which utilize tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) technology. These are more expensive than the standard passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) cells that are standard in solar production, and the modules made from them will primarily serve the residential and commercial and industrial solar markets. CEA has confirmed that these cells will be imported from cell factories in Korea owned by QCells’ parent company Hanwha.
Despite this expansion and a 3.3-gigawatt factory under construction by First Solar in Ohio, the United States is expected to remain dependent on imported solar modules to meet demand. Wood Mackenzie’s latest estimate is that the United States will install 18 gigawatts-DC of PV modules in 2022, far more than its 8 gigawatts of module production capacity. In 2023 the United States is expected to install 26 gigawatts of solar, and with these two factories will have only 12.7 gigawatts of module capacity by the end of the year. Actual production of U.S modules will be lower than these figures, given that U.S. factories are not running at
full utilization.
Source: QCells North America Head of Public Affairs Scott Moskowitz (Twitter)
Source: additional CEA Research