The average selling price of full black, back contact and monofacial tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) modules in Europe has continued to increase, as buyer sentiment has become slightly more pessimistic than in previous months.
This is according to the latest pv.index report from online solar marketplace sun.store, which has published its monthly update on European solar purchasing trends.
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As was the case in June, July saw month-on-month increases in the price of all three types of premium modules, with full black becoming the most expensive type of module, priced at an average of €0.138/Wp (US$0.16/Wp), an 8% month-on-month increase. Back-contact and monofacial TOPCon modules reported average prices of €0.135/Wp and €0.128/Wp, representing 4% and 2% month-on-month increases, respectively.
All three module types have seen a fairly sustained increase in prices this year, while the price of bifacial TOPCon modules has been more variable. Between December 2025 and May 2026, average price increased from €0.088/Wp to €0.125/Wp, even becoming more expensive than monofacial TOPCon in the latter month, but the price of bifacial modules has since dropped considerably. In July, the average price of bifacial TOPCon modules fell to 0.11/Wp; no other type of module has reported a price that low since February.
The latest module trends are shown in the graph above, which compares module price, by module type, to the PV Purchasing Managers’ Index (PV PMI), an assessment of optimism for the solar industry taken from sun.store users. The company notes that a score of 50 or higher indicates a general sentiment that the industry will grow in the future—so the majority of sun.store users do not expect the market to contract sharply—but the PV PMI has now declined consistently since May.
In May, the PV PMI score of 70 was the highest reported in over a year, but fell to 65 in July. This is still higher than the all-time low of 62 reported in December 2025, but is lower than both the 69 reported in January 2026 and the historical average of 67 across sun.store’s data.
Indeed, in January, 52% of respondents said that they expect to buy more modules in the coming months, but this fell to 46% in July. This sentiment perhaps reflects uncertainty across the European solar sector, as Europe’s operational solar projects have broken generation records this summer; in June, solar PV accounted for 25% of Europe’s monthly electricity generation for the first time ever, according to figures from Ember.
In its inverter index, sun.store’s latest report ranks Germany-based SMA Solar as the third strongest string inverter brand in the quarter ending in July, up from fourth place in the previous quarter. While Sungrow and Deye are the top string and hybrid inverter brands, reflecting the strength of the Chinese inverter manufacturing sector and its influence over European solar, the performance of European companies like SMA Solar will be integral if European solar developers are looking beyond China to source inverters.
This is especially relevant in the context of the European Commission’s ban on using EU funds for energy projects that use inverters made in China. Figures from Wood Mackenzie suggest that this ban could disrupt 14% of Europe’s inverter supply to the end of the decade.
A more positive outcome of this ban could be an increase in demand for inverters made in Europe, which already boasts a strong manufacturing sector. PV Tech Research’s Mollie McCorkindale wrote a piece for PV Tech at the end of July in which she noted that Europe has over 100GW of inverter manufacturing capacity currently in operation, and over 90% of this capacity is owned by companies headquartered in Europe.
Chief among these is SMA Solar, which has 40GW of manufacturing capacity in Germany, and the company has posted strong financial results in recent months. Its sales and earnings were up in the first half of this year, and in July raised its full-year financial guidance due to improved “market conditions”.

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