Solar Power World
By Kelly Pickerel | January 12, 2026
After 15 years reporting on the solar industry, and many more years removed from organized education where math and science were my worst subjects, I still enjoy getting into the weeds of solar panel manufacturing. I know the number of electrons in chemical elements to determine whether a solar panel will be p-type or n-type — how’s that for an English major? The last few years have been busy for the Solar Power World team as we meet U.S. manufacturing announcements with a healthy dose of skepticism. Understanding what it takes to start a solar panel manufacturing outfit in the United States, along with the intellectual property battles out there, we know that sorting fact from fiction takes dedication.
And Solar Power World only focuses on the U.S. market. When I need to know more about global manufacturing trends, I’ve always sought insights from Finlay Colville, one of the industry’s top analysts focusing on solar panel technology, manufacturing and strategy. For 15 years, Finlay managed market research business units at Solarbuzz and PV Tech before establishing Terawatt PV Research in 2025. He tracks the latest solar panel developments in Asia and determines how they affect every other market. When Finlay approached me to suggest he present his research to Solar Power World‘s U.S.-focused audience, I knew we had to make it happen.
We’re pleased to present to you a new regular feature: Benchmarking U.S. solar manufacturing with Finlay Colville. We are happy that Solar Power World has been your home for U.S. solar manufacturing news, and now we’ll have even more expert insights into the space. Finlay will use his knowledge of global manufacturing trends and relate them to the American market.
The first research edition will drop soon, but let’s first introduce this new expert voice!

Finlay Colville: I think it can be best summarized as rebooting for the next phase of manufacturing as the PV sector emerges from the excessive over-investment in China during the past few years — and as new equipment spending takes grip in the U.S. and India.
When I started researching manufacturing and technology trends in the industry some 25 years ago, there was a greater understanding globally on the equipment and materials that were used in the cell and module fabs. So, this has been the starting point for the reboot in 2026, building up a new picture of the manufacturing ecosystem that includes the key value-chain and supply-chain stakeholders, and how they adapt to the shift in component production out of China and Southeast Asia.
FC: Firstly, the timing here is key and defines the content to a large degree.
During the past couple of years, the U.S. has seen a wave of new domestic capacity announcements, with aspirational capacities often being added up to get a somewhat unrealistic picture of the domestic PV production landscape.
2025 can be seen partially as a reality reset on this, with a much clearer picture emerging of which companies have progressed with new factory build outs. Therefore, 2026 should be about tracking how much difference this makes for domestic U.S. output; in particular, at the cell stage. Remembering that producing cells, not modules, is the key step in creating a sustainable PV manufacturing landscape.
Therefore, most of the content of the articles for Solar Power World will focus on understanding actual production levels and profitability metrics from domestic PV manufacturing, not just glossing over capacity and announcements.
Another theme for the coverage will be at the company level and looking at the different strategies at play. For example, can pure-play cell production be viable in the long-term? Which companies will seek to innovate at the technology level, not simply reproduce performance metrics set by Chinese market-leaders over the past few years? And where will the next phase of investments for manufacturing expansions come from, as the sector adapts to rules on overseas entity participation?
FC: When I started analyzing and presenting findings on PV manufacturing, the industry had just broken through the annual gigawatt barrier. At this time, I often got questions about validating key global metrics for the sector or reacting to confidence levels on whether PV as a technology would emerge beyond its cottage industry phase.
During the next growth period to tens of gigawatts annually, questions then turned to technology and the prospects for thin-film variants or say, ingot pulling or casting. Or which of the next-generation silicon-based cell architectures was going to gain traction in the market?
And during the past decade, the questions and scrutiny on market research has moved to supply-chains, upstream sourcing and entity ownership status.
I think trust and value placed on market research is ultimately driven by knowing which issues are most important to the industry at any given time; and explaining these clearly and what impact they will have on company decision making over the next couple of years.
Being based in the U.K. has also had some advantages here, with no perceived bias towards national policy on PV manufacturing activity — based on there being no PV manufacturing in the U.K.!
Therefore, almost from the off, I was seen as being somewhat neutral in how I approached the PV market research space. Initially, this allowed positive engagement with the manufacturing community across Asia — Taiwan, China and then South Korea. Connection with the India PV sector was nothing short of a delight and continues to be. Also, while European PV manufacturing barely made it beyond the early days of industry growth, having an equipment background allowed ongoing interactions with all the tool makers that were key to China becoming a manufacturing powerhouse.
But coverage on U.S. PV manufacturing has been a 25-year on/off fascination of sorts for me, I think helped by the years leading up to being a PV market analyst when I was driving the solar strategy at a prominent global laser equipment supplier headquartered in Santa Clara.
This got me connected with the U.S. solar sector from an early point, with my first factory visit being BP Solar’s production facility in Frederick, Maryland — ingots, wafers and cells no less! And goodness knows how much time was spent dissecting the process flows of countless CIGS entrants over the coming years and trying to explain this to the world; or following Applied Materials’ global amorphous-silicon turnkey business ventures.
I always hoped that my coverage — then and now — on U.S. manufacturing would simply give decision-makers in companies something of value that helped them to understand the overall landscape a bit better, both domestically and globally.
Ultimately, I think the trust and value aspect is best judged in this regard; and having data to explain findings, showing this clearly in graphics and explaining the methodology fully in the public domain.
But often, it can be years later that someone reminds me of an article I wrote way back that helped a business decision — to me, that feedback has always been priceless and a prompt to keep thinking about what needs researched in the future.
FC: Yes, this is one of the main issues for the U.S. in 2026. Silicon module assembly has the lowest barrier-to-entry across the value-chain, is the least capital intensive and can be ramped up the quickest with turnkey module production lines.
While a necessary pre-requisite to having localized module assembly and supply to the domestic end market, there is the risk of placing too much emphasis on this part of manufacturing.
I see everything coming down to cell manufacturing, way more than wafering. Without a meaningful cell production landscape, there is no demand or need for ingot pulling and wafer slicing. Also, technology is all about cells, not wafers.
This is a topic for U.S. manufacturing I have been raising for some time. While it is possible to have a diverse range of module assembly companies, a more consolidated approach is probably needed for cell manufacturing. Otherwise, the risk is having a fragmented cell production landscape with no clear technology differentiation, other than the choice specific to different foreign production line suppliers.
Of course, the additional layer imposed today in the U.S. for cell manufacturing relates to IP on some n-type variants. This is perhaps having the greatest influence on cell technology choice, with some of the new cell producers in the U.S. opting for PERC or heterojunction — decisions that would likely not have been made were it not for fear of potential patent litigation.
Therefore, the ability to scale a robust cell manufacturing landscape in the U.S. is now more challenging than before. We will have a clearer picture in 12 months from now. At this point, the wafer question can be addressed better than today. For example, does the U.S. need a more dynamic solution to ingot and wafer production than is likely to be available from a Hanwha- or Corning-type of organization?
FC: While much of the coverage on the U.S. solar sector in recent years was dominated by trade policy and production incentives, FEOC was constantly lurking in the background as a much more divisive threat to overseas entities.
For the past decade at least, the U.S. market has been served by First Solar and a host of silicon-based module suppliers or supply-chain savvy trading entities that danced around policy changes with relative ease.
And many of these module supply channels simply came out of the first wave of Chinese entities or entrepreneurs that targeted the U.S. as the market with the highest module prices. Even before FEOC came into existence, understanding the business operations of module sellers into the U.S. market was more complicated and more cloak-and-dagger than any other end-market globally.
Today, it seems there is a mix of FEOC-worry, FEOC-denial and FEOC-ambivalence.
Does having a subsidiary-type operations in the U.S. that is registered as a stand-alone company – and with mostly resident U.S. shareholders and investors – make you a U.S. company? Especially if this stand-alone or arms-length entity was set up and funded initially as a domestic base for module offtake and sales to the U.S. market, and then simply went through an ownership change to satisfy FEOC requirements?
Interpreting the rules on FEOC and the actions of overseas-related entities with solar manufacturing activities in the U.S. may well address the question of how much the U.S. wants to make product locally.
But a word of caution on FEOC. There is no shortage of opinions today from third-party market observers, self-titled policy experts, media reporters and market analysts – me included – that are weighing up the implications of FEOC.
Ultimately, the U.S. has a superb set of legal experts, mostly working at law firms on the East Coast, that are uniquely placed to cover FEOC and all policy issues related to the U.S. solar industry. I always recommend that companies affected by FEOC or looking to understand what it means defer only to experts qualified to interpret legal documents.
FC: Yes, this is an interesting theme, given the dominance Chinese companies have on much of the supply-chains for silicon-based solar cells and modules.
There are so many parts to this topic, including changes in glass production location outside China, Malaysia and Vietnam. On a similar theme at the module level, backsheets and encapsulants. At the cell stage, will there be any move to decouple the total dependence of metallization paste from mainland China soon? Will new polysilicon plants planned for India and the Middle East provide any upside to the volumes of non-China made poly on the market?
Will India’s push to add cell capacity help the U.S. in any meaningful way? Are there any suppliers left for ingot pulling and wafer slicing in the Western world? Or will Chinese investment in Africa and the Middle East have longevity?
So, no shortage of trends here!
FC: People are often surprised that I don’t spend much time these days reading media coverage on the solar industry. In part, this comes from bandwidth — wanting to maximize time understanding in detail the key companies that play in the manufacturing space. But also, coverage can be dominated by press releases from companies being regurgitated almost verbatim and not questioned. And when scanning on occasion other market research findings, there can sometimes be a lack of clarity on where the data comes from and what the output means in the real world.
Just about the only exception in recent years has been Solar Power World’s coverage of the U.S. manufacturing space. And here, Kelly, you and your team have been superb in covering the developments in a way no other media outlet has done.
The spreadsheets Solar Power World tracks on solar manufacturing announcements and ramped capacity are in a league of their own when it comes to accuracy and usefulness.
But what I appreciate most is the passion, honesty and curiosity in getting to the bottom of how all the companies are progressing in building and ramping up the factories — or simply coming good on their legacy plans for investment. Your articles from the trade floors of the major U.S. solar exhibitions have almost become definitive narratives over time on how U.S. solar manufacturing is evolving. And your enjoyment in doing these floor plan trips is clear to see between the lines.
So, when I pondered recently what media outlet to contribute to in 2026, it was an easy call to make!
 
Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World.

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