How silver market dynamics are reshaping PV production – and why innovation, not scarcity, will define solar’s cost trajectory.
Silver rarely makes the front page of the energy press. But at the start of 2026, it did. The spot price of silver broke its all-time record, reaching levels more than three times the average seen across 2024. For the solar industry – where silver is a critical input in cell manufacturing – this is not just a pricing shift. It is a change in the underlying economics of photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing, how costs are managed, and how quickly innovation moves from optional to essential.
Why are silver prices rising, and why does it matter for solar?
Silver occupies a unique position – part monetary asset, part industrial material – that makes it particularly sensitive to macroeconomic uncertainty. Recent prices have been driven by a combination of geopolitical instability, concerns around trade policy, and shifting investor sentiment towards hard assets. As capital flows into precious metals, silver has followed gold’s upward trajectory – but with greater volatility due to its smaller, less liquid market.
At the same time, industrial demand for silver is strengthening across electronics, electric vehicles, and solar. Supply, however, has been slower to respond as new mining capacity takes time to develop.
For solar, the industry’s sheer scale amplifies the economic impact. Global solar installations surged by 64% in the first half of 2025, with a record 360 GW deployed. At that volume, even modest per-unit cost shifts cause significant supply chain pressure.
But this doesn’t make solar more fragile – it just makes it large enough for commodity dynamics to matter.
How exposed is PV manufacturing to silver?
Silver is essential to how silicon solar cells are made. It is used in metallisation to form the metallic contacts that carry electrical current out of the cells. Its combination of high conductivity, reliability, and compatibility with high-temperature processing makes it difficult to replace without trade-offs.
As prices have climbed, silver’s share of total module manufacturing cost has grown substantially. Industry analysis suggests it can represent 18-20% of total module costs at prices around $70 per ounce, with that proportion rising further as prices approach $100.
The pressure from cost inflation lands unevenly. Manufacturers feel it immediately, as a live input cost. But project developers and asset owners, whose module costs are typically locked in at procurement, are largely insulated. Passing on cost increases downstream has proven extremely difficult – particularly given that silver’s current surge has been faster than anything the industry has previously had to contend with.
Is this a long-term constraint on solar deployment?
No – and the industry’s own track record makes that clear. Silver usage per cell has been declining steadily for years. Average loadings fell by around 20% in 2024, and further reductions were already expected before the most recent price surge.
What has changed is not the direction of travel, but the speed. The industry has consistently improved material efficiency through better cell design, process control, and manufacturing innovation. Today’s price environment simply sharpens the incentive to move faster.
This isn’t new territory. Solar has repeatedly navigated material constraints – whether in polysilicon, wafers, or aluminium – by adapting quickly and at scale. Each cycle has driven efficiency gains and reduced reliance on constrained inputs.
How is the industry responding in practice?
Manufacturers are pushing harder on silver thrifting – refining paste formulations and screen-printing processes to reduce the amount of silver deposited per cell without compromising performance. Although these are incremental gains, they compound quickly at scale.
At the same time, substitution pathways are becoming more viable. Copper-based metallisation is gaining traction, particularly in hybrid approaches. Heterojunction (HJT) technologies, already well-suited to silver-coated copper pastes, have adopted these methods at scale. At current price levels, their per-watt manufacturing economics are becoming increasingly competitive with conventional TOPCon cells – prompting further innovation across both platforms.
In this way, rising silver prices should be considered an accelerant – compressing timelines and intensifying efforts already underway, rather than imposing a hard limit on solar’s growth.
What does this mean for solar’s cost trajectory?
Near-term, cost pressure on manufacturers is real. If silver prices remain elevated, some upward movement in module prices may eventually become unavoidable.
But the longer-term picture remains intact. Solar’s levelised cost of energy has fallen by over 90% since 2010, and that trajectory has been shaped by the industry’s ability to absorb and adapt to material volatility. Each cycle of pressure has produced innovation that leaves the supply chain structurally more efficient and more resilient.
This one will too.
Where does Cambridge Photon Technology fit in?
At CPT, we view these dynamics through a different lens – one that focuses on where lasting competitive advantage actually comes from.
Efforts to cut silver usage, improve yields, and substitute cheaper materials is rational and necessary. But they are fundamentally defensive. They aim to preserve margins in a market where cost competition is relentless.
A more resilient approach is to shift the equation entirely – via performance-led differentiation. Our Photon Multiplier increases module output by up to 15%, using existing manufacturing processes with no retooling required. That improvement in energy output directly lowers the levelised cost of electricity, maximises the leverage of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), strengthens returns on deployed assets, and critically, outweighs the bill-of-materials impact caused by silver pricing.
This helps to change the basis of the competition; manufacturers who can deliver more watts per panel gain pricing power and differentiation. Those competing purely on input cost do not.
The silver squeeze is a good reminder that cost optimisation alone is not a strategy: in solar, as in most advanced industries, innovation such as the one offered by CPT’s Photon Multiplier technology ultimately defines the cost curve.
