Segment
Solar power: from polysilicon to the inverter
Solar modules have become the cheapest source of new electricity in much of the world, produced by a manufacturing chain of extraordinary concentration. This segment covers that chain from purified silicon to the electronics that connect a panel to the grid.
In one sentence
Solar photovoltaic technology converts sunlight directly into electricity in semiconductor cells, assembled into modules and connected to the grid through inverters.
The chain runs: purify silicon into polysilicon, grow it into ingots, slice ingots into wafers, process wafers into cells, assemble cells into modules. Each step is a distinct industry, and the great majority of capacity at every one of them sits in a single country — a concentration that exceeds anything in the semiconductor supply chain.
Cost has fallen by orders of magnitude over decades, driven by scale, by wafer thinning, and by successive cell architectures that capture a little more of the incident light. The technology is now cheap enough that the interesting constraints have moved elsewhere: to interconnection queues, to land and permitting, and to what a system does after sunset.
How this breaks down
Split by stage of manufacture, and then by the electronics that make the output usable.
- Polysilicon and wafersPurifying silicon and slicing it into wafers — the two steps where the industry's geography is decided.Definition pageChokepoint
- Cell technologyFour architectures competing for a percentage point of efficiency, and what each costs to make.Definition pageChokepoint
- Module assemblyThe step that laminates cells into a product, the materials around them, and why this is the part that relocates.Definition pageChokepoint
- Inverters and trackersConverting direct current to grid-compatible alternating current, and turning panels toward the sun.Breaks down into: Inverters · Trackers2 pages below
- Perovskite tandemsStacking a second material on silicon to capture more of the spectrum, and the durability problem.Definition page
What this depends on
1 of these is marked as a chokepoint: a handful of qualified suppliers, a multi-year lead time, or a single geography.
- Supply chainChokepoint
Grid connection
A project without an interconnection agreement is not a project, whatever the module price.
Interconnection queues - Resource
Land and local consent
Utility-scale plants need large contiguous sites and the agreement of whoever lives beside them, and in several markets that is what limits build rate rather than module supply.
Companies across Solar
Every company named on a step below this page, ordered by how many of those steps it appears at. Compiled from the pages themselves rather than written separately, so the two cannot disagree. Not a ranking and not a recommendation.
19 more companies appear at a single step each; they are named on the pages for those steps.
How these pages are written
Each page explains one technology in plain language, states what it depends on, and names companies by what they supply at that step. Company roles are described qualitatively and deliberately carry no market shares, revenue figures or rankings — those change faster than an explainer can, and a stale number is worse than none. Ticker links point at company pages on this site and are provided for reference only.
Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast. A company named on a page about a technology is not thereby a good investment, and the chokepoints described are structural facts about supply chains rather than predictions about prices. Technology moves; where a page describes something as unresolved or in development, that was true when it was written.
Plutux is not an investment adviser. Market data and AI-generated analysis are for information and education only, not investment advice. Disclaimer