The global solar inverter industry will contract over the next two years as major markets in China, Europe and the US confront new volatility, according to energy market analyst Wood Mackenzie.
Globally, Woodmac forecasts that inverter shipments will contract 2% in 2025 and a further 9% in 2026, falling to 523GW by the end of next year. The contraction follows “years of an exponential rise in solar inverter demand,” which can’t be sustained as the market changes, said Joe Shangraw, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie
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China—the world’s leading solar PV market by volume and production—will see its inverter sector contract by 5% in 2025 to 304GW, a greater contraction than the global average. This is the first drop since 2019. The Chinese PV sector has been restructuring and changing course as it tries to end massive manufacturing overcapacity, sustained low prices and fierce competition between major players. This “policy uncertainty” will have ripple effects in the inverter space as well as in crystalline silicon solar manufacturing.
The rest of the Asia-Pacific market without China will expand its inverter market to 89GW in 2025, Woodmac said, supported by major investments in domestic manufacturing and emerging rooftop PV segments in India and Southeast Asia.
Europe and the US will both continue to experience decline and turbulence over the next two years. European inverter shipments face “sustained decline”, Woodmac forecasts, falling from 88GW to 83GW in 2025 and continuing to decline below 75GW annually by 2032. The forecast said this is down to “persisting inventory challenges and reduced utility-scale capture prices in key markets like Spain.”
European inverter manufacturers have faced challenges in recent years, as Chinese competitors have moved into the space with massive manufacturing capacities and low product prices.
Simultaneously, Europe’s solar market growth is set to fall for the first time in a decade this year, with 2025 levels only reached again in 2030, according to SolarPower Europe. This decline has been driven by faltering rooftop markets in many major European countries, which will hit inverter shipments particularly hard as smaller rooftop projects naturally deploy more inverters per megawatt installed.
The phaseout of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits for solar deployments will impact the US inverter market, Woodmac said, seeing the market decline by a significant 22% in 2026.
Beyond region-specific dynamics, the industry as a whole is seeing changes. Inverter prices are falling across the board, Woodmac said, driven primarily by Chinese manufacturing competition and technological advances. US prices are over 50% higher than the global average, “as market leaders Enphase and SolarEdge must compete against a growing number of Chinese vendors in Europe, Latin America, and APAC markets,” the Woodmac report said.
Cybersecurity for solar inverters
Cybersecurity is also becoming a major concern around solar inverters, as both the EU and US governments look to reduce their exposure to digital infrastructure outside of their direct control. Shangraw said stricter policies on cybersecurity are expected in 2026, which “could impact the competitive landscape between domestic and foreign manufacturers.”
US lawmakers have explicitly called for restrictions on Chinese inverters’ access to the market, while PV Tech reported today that the EU has included solar inverters as a “high-risk” product in its Economic Security Doctrine. These measures could increase the mix of domestically produced inverters in the two markets, or at least diversify from the few dominant firms in the sector. Europe in particular has installed almost 80% of its new inverters from Chinese companies, according to statistics from the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC).
“There is adequate existing local manufacturing supply or potential to ramp up to supply for the United States and the European markets,” Cormac Gilligan, associate director at S&P Global Energy, told PV Tech. Cybersecurity requirements would “at a minimum, increase utilisation rates of existing domestic manufacturing or potentially lead to expansion in manufacturing in the European Union markets and in the United States by non-Chinese manufacturers,” he added.
Long-term growth
In the long term, Shangraw said he expects the inverter market to recover by the early 2030s. “Electrification, AI demand growth and a cyclical repowering market will provide a solid foundation for inverter demand over the next decade,” he said.
“Companies that navigate the current challenges while investing in next-generation technologies will emerge stronger when the market recovers in the late 2020s.”
