During the last two decades, the solar PV industry experienced decisive changes of its global business network configurations where Chinese firms comparatively have gained competitive advantages. Chinese inter-organizational business network patterns differ from their competitors originated in the United States of America and Canada.
In the past, solar PV industry upstream network competence was mainly concentrated on the US, Germany and Canada. Chinese firms have gained significant upstream network positionings in recent years through fine-grained and intensified relationship engagements, targeting to improve their research and development and component supply quality.
Wind and solar PV systems will become more cost-competitive during the forecast period. Despite the increasing contribution needs for flexibility and reliability to integrate variable renewables, the overall competitiveness of onshore wind and solar PV changes only slightly by 2028 in Europe, China, India and the United States.
Through a detailed analysis exploring insights into upstream and downstream network dynamics, we deliver empirical evidence, that the current market leadership of Chinese solar PV firms was “not reached overnight” but is a result of relationship activities during the last 15 years.
While there appears to have been a slight dip in patenting in upstream production equipment and inputs, as well as solar cells and solar thermal, following the trade disputes in 2012/13, overall trends for all technologies continue to increase. Regional trends in solar PV patenting.
As result of our literature analysis we found that the study of firm relationships within solar PV business networks indicates a high degree of industry complexity but standardized, quantitative data sets do not exist (Nell and Andersson, 2012).