The solar pho­to­volta­ic (PV) indus­try has under­gone a dra­mat­ic evo­lu­tion over the past decade, grow­ing at an aver­age rate of 48 per­cent per year to a glob­al mar­ket size of 31 GW in 2012, and with the price of crys­talline-sil­i­con PV mod­ule as low as $0.72/W in Sep­tem­ber 2013. To exam­ine this evo­lu­tion we built a com­pre­hen­sive dataset from 2000 to 2012 for the PV indus­tries in the Unit­ed States, Chi­na, Japan, and Ger­many, which we used to devel­op a mod­el to explain the dynam­ics among inno­va­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and mar­ket. A two-fac­tor learn­ing curve mod­el is con­struct­ed to make explic­it the effect of inno­va­tion from economies of scale. The past explo­sive growth has result­ed in an over­sup­ply prob­lem, which is under­min­ing the effec­tive­ness of “demand-pull” poli­cies that could oth­er­wise spur inno­va­tion. To strength­en the indus­try we find that a pol­i­cy shift is need­ed to bal­ance the excite­ment and focus on mar­ket forces with a larg­er com­mit­ment to research and devel­op­ment fund­ing. We use this work to form a set of rec­om­men­da­tions and a roadmap that will enable a next wave of inno­va­tion and thus sus­tain­able growth of the PV indus­try into a main­stay of the glob­al ener­gy economy.

Off-grid solar and cell-phone charg­ing kit.