The Solar PV Ecosystem, A Brief History and a Look Ahead

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The solar value chain, meaning its ecosystem, begins with raw material suppliers, winds its way through equipment and consumable suppliers, to ingot, wafer, cell technology manufacturers to module assemblers (most cell manufacturers also assemble modules), to demand side participants (system integrators, modules assemblers, installers, distributors, et al), to developers of balance of systems technology (inverters, tracking, etc), to investors, utilities and other end users. Currently the low price of PV modules (technology) has placed the manufacturing side of the solar ecosystem in dire straits and suffering low margins and failure. Virtually no PV technology (referring to cells/modules) manufacturer has remained untouched.

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