The United States is preparing for another record year of solar deployment, but the domestic supply chain for piles, torque tubes, tracker components, and galvanized structural products is not expanding at the same pace. Rising steel costs, increasingly demanding domestic-content rules, limited manufacturing flexibility, and an open-loop scrap system are turning steel into a scheduling and compliance risk for utility-scale solar.
U.S. solar demand is moving faster than many industrial supply chains were designed to support. Developers plan to add 43.4 GW of utility-scale solar capacity in 2026, about 60% more than was installed in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
That growth is frequently discussed in terms of solar modules, cells, wafers, and inverters. Steel receives less attention, even though every utility-scale array depends on thousands of piles, torque tubes, rails, fasteners, motor mounts, and foundation components.
The emerging problem is not simply that the United States lacks steel. It is that the solar industry needs the correct steel product, in the correct grade and coating, manufactured through an eligible domestic process, accompanied by acceptable documentation, and delivered to a specific project during a narrow construction window.
That is a far more difficult requirement than purchasing commodity steel by the ton.
Nameplate capacity is not deliverable production
The distinction between announced capacity and usable output is already evident elsewhere in the solar supply chain. U.S. module manufacturing capacity reached 65.5 GW at the end of 2025, an increase of more than 50% over the year. However, SEIA reported that actual module production remained considerably below domestic demand.
A similar distinction applies to steel.
A domestic mill may have raw steel capacity, but that does not mean it has immediate availability for the hot rolled coil, structural section, wall thickness, yield strength, galvanizing specification, dimensional tolerance, or production lot required by a solar tracker manufacturer.
After melting and casting, the material must still pass through rolling, pickling, slitting, forming, welding, punching, swaging, coating, testing, packaging, and transportation. Capacity at any one of those stages does not guarantee capacity across the complete chain.
U.S. raw steel production reached 1.858 million net tons during the week ending July 25, 2026, with capability utilization of 80.5%, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. This does not indicate a nationwide steel shortage. It does, however, show that domestic mills are not sitting idle waiting for solar orders. Solar is competing with automotive, construction, energy, appliance, pipe and tube, and infrastructure customers for many of the same melting, rolling, coating, and fabrication assets.
The result is a product specific capacity mismatch. The United States can produce significant quantities of steel, but it may not be able to produce every solar qualified configuration at the required location and time.
Steel price volatility is reaching downstream manufacturers
The Producer Price Index for steel mill products increased from 325.105 in February 2026 to 361.439 in June, an increase of approximately 11.2% in four months. Over the same period, the index for manufacturers that produce steel products from purchased steel increased by approximately 6.3%.
These increases affect more than raw material purchasing. A torque tube or pile manufacturer must finance coil inventories, reserve production slots, carry work in process, manage coating schedules, and absorb freight and handling costs before receiving payment.
When steel quotations remain valid for only a short period, solar manufacturers face three difficult choices.
They can hold additional inventory and accept the working capital burden. They can pass escalation risk to developers and EPC contractors. They can also delay purchasing until the project schedule is firm, increasing the possibility that steel will not arrive when construction begins.
Under the current Section 232 framework, identified steel products are generally subject to a 50% additional tariff, while specified derivative categories may be subject to a separate 25% tariff or to temporarily reduced rates. These measures may support domestic investment over the long term, but in the near term they can also increase the premium for domestic material and reduce the number of commercially viable alternatives available when a U.S. mill or fabricator misses its schedule.
Domestic content is now a manufacturing control requirement
Domestic content compliance has made the steel supply chain even more consequential.
For applicable Section 48E projects beginning construction in 2026, the required domestic percentage for manufactured products is 50%, up from 45% for projects beginning construction during the second half of 2025.
Steel and tracker products do not all receive the same regulatory treatment.
IRS safe-harbor guidance treats steel piles, steel ground screws, and steel or iron reinforcing products in foundations as steel or iron products. Steel photovoltaic module racking is similarly classified for fixed-tilt ground-mounted systems. By contrast, a photovoltaic tracker is classified as a manufactured product, with the torque tube treated as one of its manufactured product components.
This distinction is important. A tracker may contain steel, but that does not automatically mean every tracker component is evaluated under the structural steel and iron rule.
For project developers, the torque tube is more than a mechanical component. Its manufacturing location, volume allocation, production records, and relationship to the project’s megawatt capacity can materially affect the domestic cost calculation.
For manufacturers, compliance can require batch-level traceability across the following areas:
A project may therefore have physically acceptable material at the construction site but still face risk if its domestic origin or allocated quantity cannot be substantiated.
The IRS requires a domestic content certification statement and supporting records sufficient to substantiate the credit. Consequently, paperwork delays can become construction delays, financing delays, or tax credit risks.
Why one missing steel component can delay an entire project
EIA reported that solar projects representing approximately 20% of planned capacity experienced schedule delays during the third quarter of 2025. The figure was lower than a year earlier, but it still represents a significant portion of the development pipeline.
The public data do not identify steel as the cause of those delays. Solar projects can be postponed by interconnection, permitting, financing, equipment, labor, weather, or transmission constraints. Nevertheless, steel illustrates how supply chain delays propagate.
Modules may be available, inverters may be reserved, and civil work may have begun, but trackers cannot be assembled without piles or torque tubes. If the specified domestic steel is late, the project cannot always substitute imported material without recalculating domestic content, obtaining new certifications, revising contracts, or potentially sacrificing part of the tax credit value.
Changing suppliers is also not instantaneous. A replacement tube or pile may require dimensional validation, weld qualification, corrosion review, mechanical testing, fitment studies, packaging approval, and installation equipment trials.
Solar manufacturing therefore needs to move away from thinking about steel only as a purchased commodity. It should be treated as a qualified engineered component with a regulatory identity.
Recyclable does not automatically mean closed loop
The United States already has a substantial scrap-based steel industry. Electric arc furnaces account for more than 70% of U.S. steel production and depend heavily on recycled material. Yet NIST has identified both scrap quality and availability as ongoing limitations to expanded circular steelmaking.
However, a high national recycling rate does not mean steel is being returned to the same domestic supply chain that originally consumed it.
Scrap generated during the production of solar piles, tubes, rails, and tracker components may be sold through general scrap markets. Once material is mixed, its heat identity, grade, coating history, chemistry, and original manufacturer may no longer be readily available. It remains recyclable, but it is no longer necessarily suitable for direct, closed-loop reuse in the same product family.
Residual chemistry is a real metallurgical constraint. The Department of Energy has noted that copper becomes trapped in the recycled steel stream and can exceed tolerances for demanding applications, requiring dilution with cleaner ore-based metallics.
The United States also participates in an international scrap market. In September 2025, the country exported approximately 0.89 million metric tons of iron and steel scrap while importing about 0.404 million metric tons. Exporting scrap is not inherently inefficient. It reflects regional economics, freight, grade requirements, and global demand. However, it demonstrates that scrap generated in the United States does not automatically return to a U.S. furnace or to a mill producing steel for domestic solar infrastructure.
For much of the solar manufacturing supply chain, this appears to be the missing loop.
Building a solar-to-steel return system
Solar manufacturers, steelmakers, galvanizers, developers, and scrap processors should establish closed-loop agreements for the prompt processing of manufacturing scrap.
Such a system would segregate scrap by grade and production source, preserve traceability, aggregate sufficient volume, and return the material to a qualified domestic melt shop under a long-term purchase or tolling arrangement.
Four changes would materially improve the system.
First, project demand should be communicated in tons, grades, dimensions, coatings, and delivery regions, not only in gigawatts. Steelmakers cannot plan capacity from national solar targets alone.
Second, developers should use longer-term steel offtake and price-adjustment mechanisms rather than expecting fabricators to absorb commodity volatility through fixed-price, project-by-project contracts.
Third, digital chain-of-custody records should track the material from the melt shop through rolling, fabrication, coating, shipping, installation, and scrap return. Domestic content documentation should be designed into production control rather than collected after the project is completed.
Fourth, scrap return clauses should be included in manufacturing and procurement agreements. The objective should not merely be to recycle production scrap, but to return known, segregated material to a domestic steelmaking route capable of converting it into new solar grade products.
The right steel, at the right time
The United States does not need more steel in the abstract. It needs a synchronized industrial system capable of supplying qualified solar steel while preserving evidence of domestic content and returning manufacturing scrap to domestic melting.
Without that coordination, the solar industry will continue to experience the contradiction of having growing domestic module capacity, substantial steelmaking capacity, and abundant recyclable material, while projects still wait for compliant piles, torque tubes, and tracker components.
The next stage of domestic solar manufacturing will not be determined only by how many factories are announced. It will be determined by whether the United States can integrate demand, melting, forming, coating, documentation, delivery, and scrap recovery into a single functioning industrial loop.
Venkata Ravi Kumar Jonnalagadda is the quality manager for solar steel at Unimacts. At the intersection of metallurgy, materials engineering, and manufacturing, he solves complex challenges and scale product quality.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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