Two weeks ago, the leading stakeholders in U.S. PV manufacturing came together at the inaugural Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 conference in Austin, Texas. The speakers left the audience with plenty to digest, and having had time to reflect, we want to share some of our thoughts.
After the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 stimulated a substantial rise in domestic module assembly, it is encouraging to see significant investment now flowing into cell manufacturing, with new capacity online or under construction and more planned. Ingots and wafers have seen initial investments, with additional capacity announced from 2028 onwards. These segments should begin to provide meaningful domestic volumes in the coming years; polysilicon remains the more challenging part of the chain.
A complete PV manufacturing ecosystem is far broader than the value chain from polysilicon to modules. It includes production equipment, spare parts and service, process gases, high-purity quartz and graphite, metallization paste, solar glass, chemicals, consumables and trained people, and a missing or unqualified input can compromise an otherwise capable factory. Herein lies the key message from Austin: if the third wave of U.S. PV manufacturing is to be meaningful and enduring, we need a complete, economically viable and sustainable domestic ecosystem, all the way down to the raw materials.
We took a close look at what went wrong in the earlier attempts to establish competitive PV manufacturing in the United States. It wasn’t all China’s fault. Trade conditions and policy mattered. So did manufacturing leadership, process discipline, technology transfer and the ability to sustain yield, throughput and quality at scale.
It is also worth understanding why China built a full ecosystem in record time between 2015 and 2020. Bank financing for new factories was tied to domestic equipment and materials, and the leading producers became owners or anchors of their suppliers. Within five years the whole value chain moved from multi to mono, to PERC, to n-type as one aligned body, with no government mandate required. The same experience carries a warning: when factory funding went uncapped in 2021–2023, capacity outran demand and prices collapsed.
The stakes are higher now. Today’s ingot, wafer and cell technologies have little in common with what was last operated here 10 to 15 years ago, and the task is to run them at gigawatt scale with the discipline that keeps yield, uptime and cost on plan. Plans to innovate our way past that task are ill placed. Mastery of current state-of-the-art production comes first, including feedstock and consumables made to specification. Innovation stays essential; it belongs on a separate technology roadmap and builds on operational mastery of current production.
The challenge of building sustainable PV manufacturing is appreciable, and significantly harder if the domestic landscape evolves in a fragmented and uncoordinated way, as the first two waves did. Collaboration is the key to making the third wave prosperous and enduring.
As an actionable next step, we propose an industry-led U.S. PV manufacturing ecosystem roadmap: a guiding document for manufacturers and suppliers, the capital markets, federal and state governments, and academia and the national laboratories, setting out how we plan to build the ecosystem and how each can contribute.
The semiconductor industry’s roadmap is the model: one shared view, for chipmakers and their suppliers, of what would be needed and when. A PV roadmap would say, for each input, where domestic capability is most valuable and where dependable allied partners can supply. It would rank gaps by supply risk, qualification time, economic viability and the consequences of disruption, pair each priority risk with a plausible mitigation, and state the investment and the policy support needed for a domestic supplier to earn a return. Identifying a gap is of little use if filling it is loss-making. The roadmap would not apply a purity test. For each input the test is critical mass: enough domestic capability to set specifications, qualify suppliers, hold the know-how and ride out a disruption while an alternative is qualified. Beyond that threshold, imports from dependable partners are healthy. They add capacity and keep domestic suppliers sharp on cost and quality.
It should also look for inputs whose demand extends beyond solar. For example, high-purity graphite serves crystal growers, fluidized-bed reactor liners, battery anodes and the nuclear restarts now being financed; silane feeds TOPCon and heterojunction cells as well as silicon-anode batteries; flat glass serves automotive and architectural markets. A supplier with several customers is a stronger supplier, and such connections help decision makers see how the pieces fit together.
We envision a living document, reviewed at least annually, that guides investors and policy makers toward dependable, long-term industrial policy. The Inflation Reduction Act supported a select group of value-chain segments and left the supply chain incomplete; Section 232 (Proclamation 11052) has since acknowledged that solar manufacturing is a matter of national security. When the last round of incentives was written, industry did not speak with one voice, and decision makers who hear contradictory messages act on none of them. A single PV manufacturing roadmap gives the industry a common reference with government, for example when Section 45X is revisited or substantial transformation is defined for PV products.
For each priority gap, the roadmap should explain the operating need, the capability available today, a feasible remedy, the investment and time required, the parties needed to deliver it and the measures of success, and it should separate what better engineering and operations can achieve from what depends on financing, demand and public policy.
The roadmap would not be a technology roadmap and does not seek to compete with the existing International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics (ITRPV). We encourage U.S. manufacturers and suppliers to take part in the ITRPV, which complements the ecosystem roadmap proposed here.
First, invite participation. We have not shopped this proposal around; we are putting our names on it and asking the industry directly whether a shared roadmap makes sense and which gaps it should address first. Participation is open to every manufacturer and supplier that wants a sustainable domestic base, each with an equal voice; no one is obliged to join, and we will not single out companies. Those who join early will shape the agenda.
Second, publish a synthesis for review. Over the coming weeks we will consolidate responses into a preliminary map of needs, existing capabilities and ranked gaps, each priority risk paired with a plausible mitigation, and make clear where views converge, where they differ and what evidence is still needed. Our goal is to share initial findings just before RE+ 2026 in Las Vegas, the week of November 16.
Third, let participating companies select the first actions. Where support is sufficient, develop a small number of proposals, each with an accountable industry lead, committed participants, a budget, a timeline with milestones and success measures. Expressions of interest should become explicit commitments before a program launches. Companies retain their own technology choices and commercial decisions. The organizational form should follow the work industry is prepared to support, drawing on the experience of SEMATECH and other collaborative efforts.
A horizon helps. By 2030, we should see qualified American cells, made from American polysilicon and wafers, in American modules, a supply base with critical mass at every step, competitive delivered costs and customers placing repeat orders.
We would like to hear from as many of you as possible. Do the justification and objective above resonate with you? Which two or three gaps most affect your ability to manufacture competitively? Where is a domestic source essential, and where are imports from dependable partners healthy? What capabilities already exist, what remedies would you suggest, and what could you contribute? The next step is to turn the concerns of individual companies into shared priorities for the entire U.S. PV manufacturing sector, and then into actions that participating companies are prepared to support. Reach us through our LinkedIn pages or by email.
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