pv magazine in Milan and resilient solar supply chains

pv magazine has set an industry gathering for 21 October in Milan on how to build more resilient solar supply chains.

The market picture here comes from an independent source: the IEA-PVPS Snapshot of Global PV Markets 2026, published in May 2026, records 698 GW of new capacity installed in 2025 and cumulative capacity approaching 3 TW, with China at around 60% of annual additions, estimated at 415 GW. The document points to persistent overcapacity, module prices more than 60% below 2023 and manufacturers' cumulative losses nearing USD 5 billion.

Supply-chain resilience, in that picture, is also a question of residual value. A production line built for the previous cell generation loses value before it is amortised when prices fall at that speed. For the buyer the effect is the opposite and immediate: cheap modules, with warranty risk concentrated in manufacturers operating in the red.

Buying modules today buys price; financing a factory requires time. A 25-year warranty is worth what the balance sheet behind it is worth, and that is what the Milan gathering has to confront.