Global solar expansion is accelerating at unprecedented scale, with annual capacity additions expected to average 540 GW through 2035. While falling equipment costs and strong policy support have helped unlock renewable energy growth, the industry now faces a different constraint: engineering capacity.
Source: Pexels.
As development pipelines expand and timelines tighten, the shortage of skilled engineers capable of delivering construction-ready solar projects is emerging as one of the sector’s most pressing challenges, placing increasing focus on productivity-enhancing design technologies.
In the United States alone, analysis from the 2025 US Energy and Employment Report reveals a projected shortfall of 53,000 workers, with 86% of solar employers reporting difficulty filling open positions.
As project pipelines lengthen and development timelines compress to meet global renewable-energy targets, a critical question is emerging: how many of those 540 gigawatts per year can the world's engineering workforce deliver alone?
A shortage the industry cannot hire its way out of: The US solar industry currently supports just over 280,000 workers against a projected requirement of approximately 355,000 by late 2026. The gap is most acute in the utility-scale sector.
Training a new utility-scale design engineer takes six to 12 months, considering technical knowledge, software, and understanding the complexity of grid regulations. The supply pipeline simply cannot close a 53,000-position gap by the end of 2026.
“At 540GW per year, delayed designs mean delayed projects, delayed grid connections, and delayed revenue. The industry will not suddenly overcome this engineering workforce shortfall in one year, therefore, it needs a more productive version of the engineers it already has,” says Paul Nel, chief executive officer of 7SecondSolar, the solar-engineering studio behind AutoPV.
The construction-ready gap: In response to the need for an accelerated engineering process, the utility-scale solar industry has seen various design-automation tools. However, speed alone does not solve the problem.
“Across the industry, most available design-automation platforms produce concept or draft-level layouts. They are adequate for early-stage feasibility assessments, but they cannot be taken directly into construction,” adds Nel.
“Developers and EPCs that rely on these tools must invest additional time and resources converting a draft layout into something that can actually be built. That additional step is where engineering hours are lost and project timelines slip.”
Roelof van den Berg 3 days AutoPV, the computational design platform developed by 7SecondSolar, was built to close that gap. The platform generates detailed engineering outputs that are construction-ready. Layouts carry 99.6% PV area accuracy. Bills of quantities are embedded in the outputs, not estimated after the fact.
Cable schedules, voltage-drop calculations, integrated LV electrical design, and geo-referenced general arrangement drawings are produced as part of the standard output. Variance from PVsyst estimates sits below 5%. Critically, the platform generates these outputs at up to 50MW per minute, allowing engineers to produce and compare multiple construction-ready design configurations to find the most optimised.
Amplifying the engineers who exist: “The intent is not to remove energy engineers from the process. Judgment, site knowledge, and engineering accountability remain firmly with the profession. AutoPV handles the repetitive workload so that engineers can focus on optimisation and value engineering.
“When we talk about productivity in this context, we are not talking about cutting corners or reducing oversight. We are talking about providing engineers with tools to achieve the scale of what the world is asking them to deliver,” says Nel.
Engineering infrastructure for a 540 GW world: The solar industry has solved the technology problem and largely solved the cost problem. The next constraint is delivery capacity. Construction-ready design is not a software feature. It is the mechanism through which project capital becomes installed capacity. The engineers exist. The ambition exists. The gap is in the tools available to connect the two.
