Italy’s 2026 budget law limits the “Iperammortamento2026” tax incentive to European-made heterojunction (HJT) and tandem perovskite solar panels. Experts say the move gives Italian manufacturer 3Sun a strategic advantage and warn that the exclusion of tunnel oxide-passivated contact (TOPCon) and back-contact (BC) technologies could distort competition and create market inefficiencies.
With the publication of the 2026 budget law, the Italian government has made changes to the “Iperammortamento” tax incentive, which encourages companies to invest in new assets, including PV systems related to energy efficiency projects.
The law limits eligibility to European-made HJT bifacial panels with a cell efficiency of more than 24%, which are currently widely produced in Italy and Europe only by 3Sun, a unit of the Italian utility Enel, and tandem perovskite modules, which are still virtually absent from the market. Mainstream module technologies, including TOPCon and BC modules, are excluded.
Nicola Baggio, director of technical and special projects at Italy-based TOPCOn and BC module maker FuturaSun, said on LinkedIn that the new rules give 3Sun a strategic advantage in the Italian market.
Laura Sartore, vice president of the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC), said pv magazine that Baggio is “completely right” that Enel/3Sun, backed by HJT cells, is “playing it safe”, noting that the company has been operating a production line for HJT cells in Catania since 2018 and has expanded it.
Sartore added that the rules create inconsistencies because efficiency values are measured differently: some by cell efficiency and some by module efficiency.
“There is a value called CTM (cell-to-module), which can be ‘loss’ or ‘gain,’ which represents the loss, or in rare cases the gain, in the transition from cell to panel,” she said. “Generally it reflects the loss in transforming the raw material into the final product. It depends on the Bill of Materials (BOM), which includes everything from the machines to the process used to produce the module.”
Sartore explained that even a cell with 24% efficiency can lose 15 to 20% in transition to a finished module due to factors such as glass type, encapsulant or weld quality. This means that high efficiency cells do not always produce a high efficiency module.
Andrea Rovera, country manager of Gruppo Green Design, said regulations could be improved, especially regarding European-made modules using European cells.
“It certainly doesn’t help that the module register of the Italian agency ENEA, unfortunately and inexplicably, does not include the efficiency values for 3Sun cells – a figure that should be mandatory,” he said. pv magazine.
Rovera said that when the ENEA list was established in 2023, most European module manufacturers used Chinese cells. To support the local supply chain, a special category has been created for two companies: Meijer Burgerthen operational but now in difficulties, and 3Sun, which was emerging at the time.
“These two companies also used European cells in their factories. In both cases they were HJT, which was, and perhaps still is, a higher level than TOPCon, and certainly than monocrystalline PERC,” Rovera said. “Theoretically, regardless of who owns the manufacturers, the decision followed the criteria of the state of the art of the European manufacturing industry in 2023, and even today, in 2025, it remains so. If the Swiss manufacturer with factories in Germany decided to close production for any strategic and geopolitical reasons, then in my opinion that is a different matter.”
Rovera added that the sudden inclusion of the new rules in the approved budget law, which were missing in previous drafts, has raised doubts among other actors.
Sartore said HJT cells are highly efficient, but both the cells and modules have environmental limitations and perform poorly in high humidity, extreme heat, intense UV or windy conditions. She added that HJT panels are usually double-sided glass-glass, making them heavier and unsuitable for all surfaces, especially for roofs with limited load-bearing capacity.
Sartore acknowledged that the technology has potential, but is not yet universal or always cost-effective. On the economic side, she said 3Sun’s focus on HJT reflects a strategy to ensure continuity and leverage existing investments.
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