In Part 2 of the special Austin-debrief series of articles this week in pv magazine, I look today at the forecasted c-Si cell production by quarter in the United States through the end of 2027 and outline the most important metric to track for the U.S. solar cell industry now – the building of high-quality, performance-leading factories.
Part1 addressed domestic U.S. module production forecasting, capturing themes covered at the recent Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 event in Austin, Texas on 22-23 September.
The analysis outlined in this article is also adapted from the new Solar Manufacturing USA Quarterly report.
Like most third-party commentary related to new c-Si module activity in the United States recently, there has been a preoccupation with adding up c-Si cell capacity announcements.
However, there has also been way too much focus on the initial technology selection for the handful of c-Si cell fabs that have come to fruition in the United Staes in the past few years.
This article explains why capacity-counting and an over-emphasis on technology selection for c-Si cell fabs in the United States today is missing the key issue – building out high-quality cell factories that should ultimately form the basis of a long-term and sustainable silicon-based ecosystem.
Additionally, I show the forecasted c-Si cell production by quarter in the United States to the end of Q4 2027, taken from data included in the new Solar Manufacturing USA Quarterly report, with upside and downside scenarios.
The United States is at the very start of a new wave of building c-Si cell factories, having watched from the sidelines as annual production volumes from Chinese companies routinely exceeded 500 GW annually since 2020.
Therefore, placing too much emphasis on a few gigawatts of nameplate capacity today is misleading and missing the big picture – how the country can build-out the most important part of a silicon-based ecosystem, solar cell production.
It is not about adding up capacity announcements or unfunded aspirations. Nor should it be taking the technology-selection of a small number of factories as indicative of any country-wide technology roadmap or strategy.
Indeed, I would go one step further. It is not even about the production volumes in 2026 or 2027. The article yesterday essentially spelled out the silicon-based U.S. module manufacturing landscape for 2027 that is one of importing cells post-232 under MIP rules.
The most important issue for silicon-based solar cell manufacturing in the United States in 2026, and over the next few years, is creating a high-quality, resilient and profitable solar cell base that forms the most important part of the domestic solar manufacturing landscape.
Without this, the United States has no long-term domestic solar PV manufacturing value; nor does it have the basis to innovate effectively or bring in R&D expertise where it matters most for silicon solar manufacturing.
Over the past 40 years, countries seeking to establish a solar cell manufacturing industry have largely benefitted from an existing or mandated industrial sector where production equipment and material suppliers were central to solar cell factory build outs.
First in Japan, then the early days in Europe, through to the 2015-2023 phase in China; solar cell factories were created and developed largely using local equipment suppliers and domestic materials. This luxury is not available to new solar cell factories in the United States. Asian and European companies are having to fill this gap, with the exception of some of the players in the U.S. solar manufacturing space today that have a track-record of building solar cell factories across Southeast Asia and elsewhere globally over the past 20 years.
This increases the challenge for silicon-based solar cell manufacturing in the United States today. Perhaps it is not surprising that volumes are still low and factory build-out and ramp-up are nowhere near the levels seen in China and China-based overseas cell investments over the past 15 years.
Therefore, there is limited, if any, value in adding up capacity numbers today for solar cell activity in the United States. And simply highlighting any ‘capacity mismatch’ between cells and modules is equally uninformative.
Yes, show the production volumes and forecast these. Track the capex. This is what forms the picture of the actual domestic market activity. But don’t jump to conclusions about capacity numbers.
Nor so on technology. It is widely accepted that the technology choices for the first wave of silicon-based cell factories have been influenced by the threat of potential patent litigation. And many have chosen the ‘safe’ option (PERC) or a differentiated n-type variant (heterojunction), while others have cited IP protection being in place (for TOPCon) that should be sufficient to deter potential IP challenge.
Remember, however, that things can change very quickly on IP. Any successful challenge to the current TOPCon narrative – or review of any original claims awarded – could remove the threat as quickly as it emerged in the first place.
The silver lining for the U.S. silicon-based sector is that the last 20 years has taught us how flexible solar cell lines can be. PERC-to-TOPCon upgrades are simple, for example. And HJT and TOPCon lines can be installed with a view to tool commonality (although less simple than moving from PERC to TOPCon).
Therefore, it really is best not to view the technology-selection of the first few cell factories as indicative of any country-wide tactic or positioning.
It is far more instructive to examine if the cell factories are being ramped into high-volume mass production, cells are being produced with state-of-the-art equipment and performance-leading metrics (regardless of the technology type).
Having, say, 20-30 GW of high-quality solar cell factories in the United States by the end of 2029 is way more important than the technology used in the first 2-3 GW. Hopefully technology will simply converge on what is best for the U.S. market at any given time – and technology itself will guide the cell manufacturing landscape rather than be a consequence of a fragmented landscape.
The figure shown above forecasts actual silicon-based solar cell production by quarter to the end of Q4’27, with the historical quarterly volumes back to Q1 2025 included for reference.
Numbers are starting from a very low base in 2025, but the signs over the past few quarters are encouraging. Forecasting to the end of 2027 is not easy, coming from such a low base and with strong capex allocated to new cell factories over the past 6-12 months.
There is a strong chance that 2027 numbers could be closer to the upside forecast shown, but this would depend largely on existing lines running at high capacity-conversion rates and some of the expansions for 2027 coming online effectively faster than current forecasting suggests.
The big changes in solar cell production are potentially from 2028 onwards, a topic that will be discussed in the closing feature of the Austin-debrief series of articles on Friday this week.
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