The outer layers will be heavily shadowed by the inner layers, of course. The builder will keep manufacturing nodes until it hits some equilibrium point between

The outer layers will be heavily shadowed by the inner layers, of course. The builder will keep manufacturing nodes until it hits some equilibrium point between node manufacturing cost and how much power it captures over its lifetime. If nodes are cheap and lifetimes are centuries long you could be fine with outer nodes that only get 0.1% as much sunlight as the innermost nodes.