Italy’s 2026 budget law limits its “Iperammortamento2026” fiscal 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.
November 7, 2025
Sergio Matalucci
From pv magazine Italy
With the publication of the 2026 budget law, the Italian government has introduced changes to the “Iperammortamento” fiscal incentive, which encourages companies to invest in new business assets, including PV systems linked to energy efficiency projects.
The law limits eligibility to European-made HJT bifacial panels with cell efficiency above 24%, which are currently produced on a mass scale in Italy and Europe only by 3Sun, a unit of Italian utility Enel, and tandem perovskite modules, which are still nearly absent on the market. Mainstream module technologies, including TOPCon and BC modules, are excluded.
Nicola Baggio, technical and special projects director 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), told pv magazine that Baggio “is absolutely right” that Enel/3Sun, supported by HJT cells, is “playing it safe,” noting the company has operated an HJT cell production line 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 others by module efficiency.
“There is a value called CTM (cell-to-module), which can be ‘loss’ or ‘gain,’ representing the loss, or in rare cases the gain, in the transition from cell to panel,” she said. “In general, it reflects the loss in transforming the raw material into the finished product. It depends on the bill of materials (BOM), including everything from the machinery to the process used to produce the module.”
Sartore explained that even a 24% efficient cell can lose 15% to 20% in the transition to a finished module due to factors such as glass type, encapsulant, or welding quality, meaning high-efficiency cells do not always produce a high-efficiency module.
Andrea Rovera, country manager of Gruppo Green Design, said the regulation could be improved, particularly regarding European-made modules using European cells.
“It certainly doesn’t help that the module register created by Italian agency ENEA, unfortunately and inexplicably, doesn’t include the efficiency values for 3Sun cells – a figure that should be mandatory,” he told pv magazine.
Rovera said when the ENEA list was created in 2023, most European module makers used Chinese cells. To support the local supply chain, a special category was created for two companies: Meyer Burger , then operational but now struggling, and 3Sun, which was ramping up at the time.
“These two companies also used European cells in their factories. In both cases, they were HJT, which certainly 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 plants in Germany decided to close production for whatever strategic and geopolitical reasons it chose to consider, that’s another matter, in my opinion.”
Rovera added that the sudden inclusion of the new rules in the approved Budget Law, absent from previous drafts, has raised doubts among other operators.
Sartore said HJT cells are highly efficient, but both the cells and modules have environmental limitations, performing 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, particularly roofs with limited load 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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