By Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's Hanwha Solutions Corp said on Wednesday its unit Hanwha Q Cells will invest a total of $2.5 billion to build a solar power manufacturing value chain in the U.S. state of Georgia through June 2025.
The company's board approved on Wednesday a $2.31 investment to build a solar power ingot, wafer, cell and module factory, the company said in a regulatory filing.
This is in addition to a roughly $200 billion U.S. investment approved late last year, a Hanwha Solutions spokesperson said.
With the investment, the company is expected to increase its solar module production capacity in the United States from 1.7 gigawatts as of 2022 to 8.4 gigawatts as of 2024, Hanwha Solutions said in a press conference.
Hanwha Solutions said it expects the large-scale investment to effectively respond to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes tax credits and other government support for the renewable energy industry in response to climate change.