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Global solar supply chains are shifting toward protectionism and industrial policies designed to support domestic manufacturing, according to an interview with pv magazine featuring Laura Sartore, CEO of Italian solar machinery and production line specialist Ecoprogetti. Sartore told the publication that every major supply chain worldwide except China is moving toward some form of protectionism and price floors, with the United States among the most prominent examples.
According to Sartore, the US market demonstrates that minimum price thresholds, even when set above the prices charged by Chinese manufacturers, do not necessarily slow demand. She indicated that the sector continues to grow despite higher component costs, supported by the development of a domestic supply chain. In China, prices are also rising gradually across the supply chain after government efforts to curb overcapacity, a trend that was expected to continue into 2025. Sartore said this reflects a growing focus on the economic viability of manufacturing in a market where solar technology has already established its competitiveness against other energy sources.
Sartore identified India as one of the most compelling examples of industrial policy in the solar sector. The Indian government is progressively expanding protectionist measures and domestic manufacturing requirements beyond modules to include cells, wafers and ingots, aiming to reduce dependence on Chinese imports and strengthen local production capacity. Sartore said India has the most serious industrial policy, having observed Europe’s mistakes and continuing to monitor developments in the United States, and she highlighted the clear industrial strategy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
A key element of that strategy is industry consolidation. Production capacity exceeding domestic demand is not necessarily seen as a problem and can instead encourage mergers and direct investment toward underdeveloped segments of the supply chain. Sartore said the era of small factories with 200-500 MW of capacity is over and that multi-gigawatt-scale facilities are now emerging, which she described as the only way forward for a continent-sized nation like India. This consolidation is helping create larger, more financially robust manufacturers able to invest not only in cell and module production but also in materials and components such as glass, encapsulants, backsheets and junction boxes.
According to Sartore, India now has the most comprehensive solar manufacturing supply chain outside China, though domestic polysilicon production remains underdeveloped. She explained that beyond raw material extraction, polysilicon production requires specialized technological expertise, capital-intensive facilities and competitive access to energy, capabilities she said are currently lacking and must be developed. She also stressed that India must aim for high environmental standards and low-emission processes from the outset rather than simply replicating capacity without prioritizing emissions, noting that these requirements could lengthen the timeline for building a domestic supply chain.
While India and the United States focus on large-scale factories and highly integrated supply chains, Sartore advocates a different approach for Europe. She argues that Europe’s industrial model cannot be assessed by the same criteria applied in the United States or Asia, since the continent’s manufacturing sector has historically been built around small and medium-sized enterprises, industrial clusters and networks of specialized manufacturers. She pointed to Italy and Germany, where industries have achieved international leadership through networks of relatively small but highly competitive companies, and said Europe’s multi-factory, network-based model should not be abandoned.
This does not mean small module assembly lines can remain competitive regardless of capacity. Sartore said manufacturers need a minimum production scale and adequate investment in technology and automation to justify capital expenditure and maintain competitive costs, citing 800 MW to 1 GW as the minimum threshold for a sustainable investment. She identified 1 GW to 3 GW as offering an optimal balance between economies of scale, financial viability and operational complexity, typically corresponding to companies with annual revenue of EUR100 million to EUR200 million and roughly 150 to 300 employees.
Sartore noted that operating costs, particularly raw material procurement, present a challenge beyond initial capital investment. While increasing capacity initially reduces unit production costs, there is a point beyond which the financial burden of running a larger facility offsets those savings. She said that in the European context the 1 GW to 3 GW range captures economies of scale, while beyond 3 GW additional management costs and financial charges weigh on the bottom line without necessarily lowering raw material procurement costs. For a 5 GW factory, working capital requirements can become significant, requiring substantial credit lines, bank guarantees and careful financial planning, and larger facilities also face greater financial exposure if demand falls short of capacity.
Sartore explained that in Europe, without supply chain integration, purchasing 5 GW worth of raw materials would require structured bank collateral, with high costs for credit guarantees and interest on cash flow weighing on the purchase price and potentially making the resulting module no more cost-effective than one from a smaller manufacturer. She said a larger factory therefore does not necessarily have lower production costs than a medium-sized facility once financing expenses and operating overheads are considered, and that a more moderate scale can help medium-sized European manufacturers limit financial exposure and manage working capital.
Production capacity should also reflect market demand, according to Sartore. Europe’s solar market is more fragmented than other major international markets, with projects generally smaller than gigawatt-scale installations and manufacturers required to handle a wider range of order sizes. European projects often range from a few megawatts to several tens of megawatts, while installations approaching or exceeding 1 GW remain relatively rare. Sartore said this supports a network of manufacturers able to adapt production to individual customer requirements, adding that Europe is unlikely to see many gigawatt-scale solar plant projects and that diverse requirements and local conditions make numerous medium-to-large plants more likely than many mega-installations. Production flexibility therefore becomes a key competitive factor alongside manufacturing costs and supply chain capabilities.
The dynamics shaping global photovoltaic supply chains, including modules, inverters and battery energy storage systems, are scheduled to be discussed during a session titled Decoding solar supply chains at the NetZero event in Milan on Oct. 21.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
This report is an independent strategic market study that provides a structured, commercially grounded analysis of the market for Solar Cells and Module in India. It is designed for battery and storage manufacturers, power-electronics suppliers, system integrators, EPC partners, developers, utilities, investors, and strategic entrants that need a clear view of deployment demand, technology positioning, manufacturing exposure, safety and qualification burden, project economics, and competitive structure.
The analytical framework is designed to work both for a single specialized storage or conversion component and for a broader renewable energy generation component, where market structure is shaped by chemistry, duration, project economics, system integration, safety requirements, route-to-market, and grid-interface logic rather than by one narrow customs heading alone. It defines Solar Cells and Module as Semiconductor devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity, manufactured as individual cells and assembled into modules (panels) for integration into solar power systems and examines the market through deployment use cases, buyer environments, upstream input dependencies, conversion and integration stages, qualification and safety requirements, pricing architecture, commercial channels, and country capability differences. Historical analysis typically covers 2012 to 2025, with forward-looking scenarios through 2035.
This report is designed to answer the questions that matter most to decision-makers evaluating an energy-storage, battery, renewable-integration, or power-conversion market.
At its core, this report explains how the market for Solar Cells and Module actually functions. It identifies where demand originates, how supply is organized, which technological and regulatory barriers influence adoption, and how value is distributed across the value chain. Rather than describing the market only in broad terms, the study breaks it into analytically meaningful layers: product scope, segmentation, end uses, customer types, production economics, outsourcing structure, country roles, and company archetypes.
The report is particularly useful in markets where buyers are highly specialized, suppliers differ significantly in technical depth and regulatory readiness, and the commercial landscape cannot be understood only through top-line market size figures. In this context, the study is designed not only to estimate the size of the market, but to explain why the market has that size, what drives its growth, which subsegments are the most attractive, and what it takes to compete successfully within it.
The report is based on an independent analytical methodology that combines deep secondary research, structured evidence review, market reconstruction, and multi-level triangulation. The methodology is designed to support products for which there is no single clean official dataset capturing the full market in a directly usable form.
The study typically uses the following evidence hierarchy:
The analytical framework is built around several linked layers.
First, a scope model defines what is included in the market and what is excluded, ensuring that adjacent products, downstream finished goods, unrelated instruments, or broader chemical categories do not distort the market boundary.
Second, a demand model reconstructs the market from the perspective of consuming sectors, workflow stages, and applications. Depending on the product, this may include Grid-connected solar farms, Commercial rooftop installations, Residential solar systems, Industrial self-consumption projects, Off-grid electrification, and Solar-powered consumer electronics and mobility across Power Generation (Utilities/IPPs), Commercial Real Estate, Industrial Manufacturing, Residential Construction, Telecommunications, and Public Infrastructure and Technology R&D and Pilot Lines, Capacity Planning and CAPEX Deployment, Supply Chain Sourcing and Qualification, Manufacturing Process Optimization, Quality Assurance and Certification, Sales Channel and Distribution Setup, and Project Design and System Integration. Demand is then allocated across end users, development stages, and geographic markets.
Third, a supply model evaluates how the market is served. This includes Polysilicon, Silicon Wafers (Mono Grown, Cast Multi), Solar Glass, Encapsulation Materials (EVA, POE), Backsheets, Frames (Aluminum), Silver Paste & Conductive Adhesives, and Specialty Gases and Chemicals, manufacturing technologies such as Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC), Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact (TOPCon), Heterojunction Technology (HJT), Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC), Bifacial Module Design, Half-Cell and Shingled Cell Interconnection, and Advanced Module Encapsulation and Framing, quality control requirements, outsourcing, contract manufacturing, integration, and project-delivery participation, distribution structure, and supply-chain concentration risks.
Fourth, a country capability model maps where the market is consumed, where production is materially feasible, where manufacturing capability is limited or emerging, and which countries function primarily as innovation hubs, supply nodes, demand centers, or import-reliant markets.
Fifth, a pricing and economics layer evaluates price corridors, cost drivers, complexity premiums, outsourcing logic, margin structure, and switching barriers. This is especially relevant in markets where product grade, purity, customization, regulatory burden, or service model materially influence economics.
Finally, a competitive intelligence layer profiles the leading company types active in the market and explains how strategic roles differ across upstream material suppliers, component and controls providers, OEMs, storage-system integrators, EPC partners, project developers, and distribution or service channels.
This report covers the market for Solar Cells and Module in its commercially relevant and technologically meaningful form. The scope typically includes the product itself, its major product configurations or variants, the critical technologies used to produce or deliver it, the core input categories required for manufacturing, and the services directly associated with its commercial supply, quality control, or integration into end-user workflows.
Included within scope are the product forms, use cases, inputs, and services that are necessary to understand the actual addressable market around Solar Cells and Module. This usually includes:
Excluded from scope are categories that may be technologically adjacent but do not belong to the core economic market being measured. These usually include:
The exact inclusion and exclusion logic is always a critical part of the study, because the quality of the market estimate depends directly on disciplined scope boundaries.
The report provides focused coverage of the India market and positions India within the wider global energy-storage and renewable-integration industry structure.
The geographic analysis explains local deployment demand, domestic capability, import dependence, project-development relevance, safety and approval burden, and the country’s strategic role in the wider market.
This study is designed for strategic, commercial, operations, project-delivery, and investment users, including:
In many energy-transition, storage, power-conversion, and project-driven markets, official trade and production statistics are not sufficient on their own to describe the true market. Product boundaries may cut across multiple tariff codes, several product categories may be bundled into the same official classification, and a meaningful share of activity may take place through customized services, captive supply, platform relationships, or technically specialized channels that are not directly visible in standard statistical datasets.
For this reason, the report is designed as a modeled strategic market study. It uses official and public evidence wherever it is reliable and scope-compatible, but it does not force the market into a purely statistical framework when doing so would reduce analytical quality. Instead, it reconstructs the market through the logic of demand, supply, technology, country roles, and company behavior.
This makes the report particularly well suited to products that are innovation-intensive, technically differentiated, capacity-constrained, platform-dependent, or commercially structured around specialized buyer-supplier relationships rather than standardized commodity trade.
The report typically includes:
The result is a structured, publication-grade market intelligence document that combines quantitative modeling with commercial, technical, and strategic interpretation.
Energy-Storage Market Structure and Company Archetypes
Part of Adani Group; one of India's largest integrated solar manufacturers.
India's largest solar module exporter; capacity over 12 GW.
Leading module producer with global certifications.
Subsidiary of Tata Power; established player in solar manufacturing.
Integrated manufacturer of solar modules and encapsulation materials.
Rapidly expanding module capacity; strong domestic and export presence.
Known for high-efficiency modules and EPC services.
Diversified energy company with solar manufacturing division.
Focus on residential and commercial solar modules.
Manufacturer of polycrystalline and monocrystalline modules.
Part of Chiripal Group; new entrant with large capacity plans.
Known for high-efficiency mono PERC modules.
Exports to multiple countries; ALMM certified.
Growing manufacturer with focus on quality and innovation.
Part of the Goyal Group; produces mono and poly modules.
Diversified engineering group with solar manufacturing arm.
Major supplier of solar glass to module manufacturers.
One of India's oldest solar cell manufacturers; recently revived.
Part of Moser Baer Group; cell and module producer.
Specializes in solar cell production; under restructuring.
Integrated manufacturer with cell and module lines.
Part of Borosil group; produces modules for domestic market.
Focus on off-grid and rooftop solar solutions.
Part of Mahindra Group; major solar project developer.
Independent power producer; large solar portfolio.
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