Solar Power and the Solar Supply Chain

Solar photovoltaics (PV) is the cheapest new source of electricity in most of the world, and it got that way through a manufacturing cost collapse driven mostly by China. The module price that a developer pays fell from several dollars per watt in the late 2000s to ~$0.10/W (China export, 2024) and ~$0.085–0.095/W for Tier-1 TOPCon modules early in 2026 (BloombergNEF via secondary reports; verify), and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that the global average cost of electricity from new utility-scale solar fell by ~90% between 2010 and 2023, to ~$44/MWh. The world added ~600 GWdc of solar in 2024 (BloombergNEF and IEA estimates; verify), more than all other power sources combined. Yet the industry that made this possible has repeatedly destroyed its own profits. Chinese manufacturers own more than 80% of every stage of the chain from polysilicon to module, and over 90% of polysilicon and wafers (IEA, 2022–24), and built so much capacity that prices fell below cash cost in 2023–25: LONGi, the world's largest module maker, reported its first annual loss in more than a decade for 2024. In the United States, the opposite problem holds: modules cost two to three times the world price because of tariffs, anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD), the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and, from 2026, the "foreign entity of concern" (FEOC) rules in the 2025 tax law. Downstream, the economics split three ways: utility-scale plants sold under power purchase agreements (PPAs), commercial and industrial (C&I) systems sold against a business's bill, and residential rooftops sold to households, a segment where finance is the product and where bankruptcies (SunPower 2024, Sunnova 2025) followed the end of retail-rate net metering in California. Finally, solar's success erodes its own value: in sunny markets, midday prices fall towards zero or below, curtailment rises, and the next megawatt of solar earns less than the last unless it is paired with storage (08). This section explains the chain, the technology race, trade policy, the three market segments, cost and value, and how to read solar numbers. Two companion files give a worked payback example for a residential and a C&I system, and a diligence checklist on the supply chain and FEOC rules.