Between 2026 and 2028, the U.S. downstream solar community must focus its attention on domestic solar cell production to establish a sustainable manufacturing ecosystem rather than speculating on early-stage raw materials.
Announcements and potential investments into creating a full-integrated solar PV manufacturing eco-system have been in abundance since the Inflation Reduction Act was announced in 2022.
While the tendency has been to look at the entire value-chain and raw materials supply, the focus in the near term is firmly on solar cell production.
This article explains why the U.S. downstream community – comprising module procurement, investment and third-party auditing services – needs to focus its attention during 2026 to 2028 on solar cell production, as opposed to speculating on polysilicon, ingot and wafer production domestically.
Solar cell production has long been considered essential to forming a sustainable silicon-based PV manufacturing ecosystem, but its importance in the United States today appears to be way more than simply a midstream capacity build-out exercise.
