Welcome to the PV Chart of the Week from our colleagues at PV Tech Research. This week, we look at the annual nameplate capacity for solar cells and modules in the US since 2020.
If, up until 2023, the gap between the two was narrower, in the last two years, it has widened significantly as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) accelerated domestic module assembly in the country faster than solar cell production.
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The imbalance between solar cell and module nameplate capacities was highlighted in 2023 in a guest blog by Intertek CEA on PV Tech, which warned of a bottleneck and companies forced to procure cells.
The forecast for 2027 is that the US will reach nearly 100GW of module nameplate capacity, 96GW to be more exact, while solar cells will be at just over 50GW. This would still leave half of the domestic modules without a supply of domestic solar cells. Despite that ongoing imbalance between both parts of the solar supply chain, the 2027 forecast for solar cell nameplate capacity would cover the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie’s forecast for solar PV installations in the coming years.
The state of the US solar supply chain will be explored in detail at our annual PV CellTech USA conference in San Francisco on 13-14 October 2026. For full agenda and booking details, click the link above.
