The Cartersville plant is a milestone for domestic clean energy as developers rush to beat upcoming tax deadlines.
Qcells on Tuesday said it started manufacturing solar cells at its factory in Cartersville, Georgia, a major step toward having a fully domestic solar supply chain.
The factory will be the only one in the U.S. to make every major solar panel component — ingot, cells, and wafers — under one roof. Production is still ramping up, but by the end of this year it is slated to have 3.3 gigawatts of capacity. The company makes 8.6 GW of finished solar panels a year between its Cartersville factory and another in Dalton, or enough to fulfill about 20% of U.S. installed capacity last year.
According to Scott Moskowitz, Qcells’ vice president of market strategy, it’s a major milestone given that just a decade ago, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry was “basically extinct.”
“Now Qcells sells panels that are U.S.-made, which gives our customers certainty over their supply chains, minimizes risks, and the opportunity to take advantage of domestic content bonuses that exist under the investment tax credit,” he said.
Solar project developers are rushing to start construction ahead of a July 4 deadline, imposed last year by the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill, to qualify for an up to 40% investment tax break if a certain percentage of their materials are U.S.-made. Those that meet the deadline will have four years to complete the project and secure the credit.
Otherwise, projects that miss the deadline will have to be operational by the end of 2027 to qualify for the tax credits. OBBB also attached “foreign entity of concern” rules to the tax break to prevent Chinese-linked firms in the U.S. from claiming subsidies, although the Treasury Department still hasn’t finished that guidance.
While the ITC has been a key driver of U.S. solar demand since 2006, it was the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s 45X manufacturing tax credits for clean energy components that spurred record investment in new U.S. factories — or more than $100 billion between 2023 and 2025 across batteries, solar, electric vehicles, and critical minerals.
The OBBB left 45X intact. The credit allows U.S. companies that make multiple clean energy components in the same factory to claim the credit for each step. That’s a boon for Qcells’s Cartersville factory, which is eligible for nearly $550 million in tax breaks, offsetting a portion of the $2.5 billion initial capital investment announced in January 2023.
The opening of the Cartersville plant boosts the domestic solar supply chain. But for now, Qcells, a subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, will still import the majority of its solar components from suppliers in South Korea and Malaysia to produce its 8.6 GW of panels. Last year, shipments of solar cells were slowed down by the U.S. Customers and Border Protection for months under a law that bars goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region from entering the U.S. Qcells said it was certain its supply chain was free of material from Xinjiang, and was able to return to normal operations by March, PV Magazine reported.
The border delays underscored the risks of relying on foreign solar supply chains at a time when every administration dating back to former President Barack Obama has implemented tariffs on imports from China, as well as Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. That goal is to help U.S. manufacturers compete with China’s dominance over the supply chain and its attempts to circumvent U.S. trade barriers. The Trump administration is also considering tariffs on imports from India, Indonesia, and Laos.
U.S. solar manufacturers now make enough panels — or nearly 70 GW — to more than satisfy annual domestic demand, Moskowitz said, but there are still gaps in solar wafers and cells. The Solar Energy Industries Association in June reported 3.2 GW of U.S. cell production and 7 GW of ingot and wafer production.
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Qcells’ factory will boost those totals. And U.S. peers Suniva and T1 Energy are also expanding U.S. cell production. However, the ups and downs of policy have also dissuaded some investment as well; Norway’s NorSun earlier this year canceled plans for a 5-GW ingot and wafer factory in Tulsa, Okla.
“We’ve come a long way in reshoring our supply chains, but there’s still gaps,” Moskowitz said. “So that means there’s an opportunity to continue supporting existing investments and cultivate new ones.”
Still, the U.S. solar manufacturing industry remains turbulent. The investment tax credit for solar — which incentivizes developers to buy U.S.-made equipment — sunsets in 2028. That means any projects that start construction that year and beyond could decide to buy cheaper imported equipment to keep costs down. Meanwhile, the OBBB also ended the residential solar tax credit, eroding demand from homeowners facing higher upfront costs. That helped fuel a flurry of bankruptcies among consumer loan and installation companies.
Many solar manufacturers are focused on the utility-scale market, which faces its own headwinds. They include lengthy grid interconnection queues and the Trump administration’s policies blocking permits for projects on federal lands. Those policies have left a pipeline of more than 57 GW of new solar and wind capacity at risk of delay or cancellation by 2029.
Moskowitz was optimistic that the “overwhelming” political support for U.S. manufacturing will continue. He added that energy affordability is now a kitchen table issue, and solar is one of the cheapest and fastest sources of energy to deploy.
Catherine Boudreau is a senior reporter at Latitude Media. She’s spent a decade covering, energy, climate and agriculture issues at the intersection of business and policy, at publications including Business Insider and Politico.
