Welcome to the PV Chart of the Week, produced in tandem with our colleagues at PV Tech Research. This week, we look at European inverter manufacturing capacity, production and supply.
European inverter manufacturing faces a sharp structural paradox: capacity is doubling while factory utilisation decreases. Driven by scaling initiatives from SMA Solar, Power Electronics, and others, regional annual nameplate capacity will surge from 60GW in 2021 to over 120GW by 2027. Yet production will reach only 70GW, leaving 43% of capacity idle by 2027.
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After peaking at 83% in 2023, utilisation will plummet to just 57% by 2027. Newly commissioned facilities require extended ramp-up periods, while manufacturers deliberately throttled output in 2024-2025 to clear inventory backlogs from the 2022-2023 demand surge.
Meanwhile, import dependency remains entrenched despite this capacity buildout. Total demand (highlighted as “Supply” in the chart) in Europe will grow from 52GW in 2021 to 141GW by 2027, yet domestic production will supply less than half. Chinese imports have held a stubborn 50% market share since 2023, down from 70-80% in prior years but still dominant, even as European capacity doubled. Though some European production is exported, volumes remain insufficient to close the competitiveness gap.
European manufacturers have built the infrastructure, but cannot capture market share. Chinese suppliers maintain advantages in price, supply chain integration, and economies of scale. Trade measures, including the July 2026 FCC ban on foreign-produced inverters in the US and European Investment Bank financing restrictions, have yet to shift this dynamic.
Mollie McCorkindale, senior analyst at PV Tech Research, will be a speaker at the upcoming PV ModuleTech Europe Conference in Málaga, Spain, on 3-4 November 2026. For more details about the conference and booking a ticket, click the link above. Use our discount code Spk20 for 20% off tickets.
