Qcells today officially announced the completion of its Dalton, Georgia, factory expansion. The company added 2 GW of solar panel manufacturing capacity to Dalton, bringing the site’s full output to more than 5.1 GW. The Qcells Dalton campus is now the largest solar panel manufacturing site in the Western Hemisphere, and it is the first solar panel plant expansion since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The completed Dalton expansion created 510 additional solar factory jobs and will also assemble two new solar products: the Q.TRON G2 residential solar panel and a bifacial panel for the commercial and utility markets.

Qcells is also constructing a fully-integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia. The Cartersville factory will manufacture solar ingots, wafers, cells and finished panels. By 2024, between the Dalton and Cartersville facilities, Qcells anticipates its solar production capacity in the United States to reach 8.4 GW a year.

“Completing this factory marks the third expansion we’ve made in Dalton, and it’s just the beginning of Qcells’ larger mission to build a fully integrated solar supply chain in America,” said Justin Lee, CEO of Qcells. “The Inflation Reduction Act and the efforts of Georgia’s economic development team helped make these ambitious plans possible, and with it thousands of careers in clean energy. As we build new solar technology from Dalton and prepare for the start of Cartersville, it is critical that our local to federal leaders continue to work not only with us, but the larger industry to ensure our collective investments deliver for communities for decades to come.”

Qcells opened its first U.S. factory in Georgia in 2019 and hired 750 people to manufacture 1.7 GW of solar. Last year, Qcells announced a plan to add 1.4 GW to its manufacturing output and hire 535 more people. The third expansion brought another 2 GW of capacity online.