Many large-scale photovoltaic (PV) energy programs have been launched and developed in the world without a thorough sustainable thinking resulting in an on-going misalignment between the demand and supply of the PV systems. The global PV industry has encountered a serious oversupply problem causing fierce competitions among the PV supply chains and also led to the dumping accusation and anti-dumping trade battles between the PV system im. Many large-scale photovoltaic (PV) energy programs have been launched and developed in the world without a thorough sustainable thinking resulting in an on-going misalignment between the demand and supply of the PV systems. The global PV industry has encountered a serious oversupply problem causing fierce competitions among the PV supply chains and also led to the dumping accusation and anti-dumping trade battles between the PV system importing and exporting countries. It is critical to develop better policy and business insights to redirect the current business exchanges and the industry policies for the PV supply chain development. This paper attempts to examine theoretically and numerically the business dynamics in a multiple PV supply chain system to acquire better insights and propose appropriate industry policy and business strategy directions for both the governments and businesses. This study mimics the contemporary PV supply chains with three supply chain game-theoretical models examining the equilibrium conditions of the multiple PV supply chains under Cournot competition. The numerical and sensitivity analyses of the theoretical supply chain models create several valuable findings on the dynamics regarding the economic decisions of the supply chain members in a pure centralized, a pure decentralized and a hybrid multiple supply chain system. The quantitative analytical results provide a strong support to the contemporary supply chain theory advocating “the world of the business comp. Multiple photovoltaic supply chainsGame-theoretical modelingCournot competitionNumerical analysisGiven the abundance of sunshine across the globe, solar power has the potential to supply a significant amount of electricity that is economically, environmentally and socially attractive. Solar power generates electricity with no global warming air pollution, no fuel costs, and no risks of fuel price spikes, and has the potential to help move the world toward cleaner, reliable, and affordable sources of electricity. The installed price of solar energy has declined significantly in recent years as policy and market forces have driven more and more solar installations.The solar photovoltaic energy, a major source of clean energy, has been encouraged and developed by many countries to counter the impact due to the global climate change. Photovoltaics industry (PV industry) policies are made and implemented by many governments. Many large-scale photovoltaic energy programs have been launched and developed in both developed and developing nations. By 2050, it is estimated the PV global cumulative installed capacity could reach 16% of the global electricity production (IEA, 2014). On the one hand, this has led to the increase of the solar energy conversion efficiency and the reduction of the cost of PV module (due to the advancement of solar technology and higher competition); on the other hand, it has also caused the oversupply and excess capacity of the PV module production and assembly.Due to the growing research interest in the solar energy development, there are many recent literature investigating and comparing the PV industries in major markets in the world and their relevant policy and related impacts.De Boeck et al. (2016) carried out a comprehensive evaluation of the support policy for photovoltaic installations in the residential sector of the major European markets, and conducted a comparison of past and present policies in the major EU market through investment profitability. Huang (2015) studied the effects of the China and U.S. subsidy policies through comparing their developing strategies, specific subsidies and industrial conditions using two three-stage sequential game models, identified the inherent defects of China's subsidy and analyzed the advantages of the U.S. industrial and trade policy portfolio. Zhi et al. (2014) examined and compared the history of the China PV industry policy development to those of the United States, Germany and Japan from the perspective of both the supply-side and the demand-side policies. Chen (2015) studied China's central-local government relations during the formation and implementation of the PV industry policies.Furthermore, the present situations and future trends of the major PV markets are also studied in many recent literature. Shouman et al. (2016) showed the. The core component of a solar photovoltaic system (i.e. a PV system) is the solar module or panel. The manufacturing process of the solar modules includes: C-Pi purification, ingot molding, wafer slicing, cells manufacturing and panel/module producing. The solar modules together with the batteries, controllers, inverters and trackers are then assembled as a PV system ready for the commercial or residential installation. Therefore, a PV supply chain is mainly composed of a photovoltaic assembler (will be called assembler or PA in this paper) and its C-Pi module supplier (will be called supplier or MS). In practice, a large PA normally sources from a large MS who does not supply to the competing PAs of similar market scale. In North American market, for example, Solar City, one of the major PAs, sources the modules/panels from a major Asian MS, while its key competitor, Canadian Solar, sources the modules/panels from another Asian MS. Fig. 1 shows there are n PV supply chains competing in a PV system market providing homogenous products and corresponding services.The Balance-of-System (BoS) cost of a PV system assembly for the assembler i is c0i, which includes the cost of components (batteries, controllers, inverters and trackers), structure, battery storage, regulation, control and wiring. The cost of a module produced by the supplier i is ci. The wholesale price of a module.
