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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | January 19, 2018 |
As the Lunar New Year approaches, China put several projects on hold. Many top-tier module manufacturers have stopped purchasing cells and handling OEM orders. In addition, some cell makers became conservative toward the shipment to India, leading to a plummet of multi-Si cell prices this week. Cell makers are likely to continually lower the capacity utilization rates, which mean the off-peak season has officially arrived in the PV market.
Poly
Although the off-peak season has arrived, polysilicon makers are still running at full capacities, leading to continuous tight supply. The average trading price reached RMB 153-158/kg.
Wafer
Due to the rapid decline of multi-Si cell and module prices, the multi-Si wafer market witnessed stable quantities and prices. Since they are ready for the off-peak season, multi-Si wafer prices are lowered US$ 0.005 to US$ 0.635/piece in the overseas this week.
For mono-Si wafers, prices didn’t fluctuate much before new price quotes are released for leading manufacturers. Prices this week remained stable from last week: RMB 5.4/piece and US$ 0.725/piece for top-tier manufacturers; RMB 5.1-5.3/piece and US$ 0.7-0.71/piece for mid-to-small-scale manufacturers. It seems that mono-Si products’ high cost effectiveness has temporarily stabilized wafer demand and prices, resulting in slight increase of mono-Si demand.
Cell
As multi-Si cell prices began to fall last week, prices dropped more substantially this week. The average trading price dropped from RMB 1.65/W last week to RMB 1.55-1.58/W this week. Some markets even saw RMB 1.5/W.
Multi-Si cell is priced at US$ 0.205-0.21/W in the overseas markets. If prices will slowly reach RMB 1.5/W in China, non-Chinese manufacturers will suffer from higher costs, made it difficult for them to catch up and force them to lower the capacity utilization rates. Prices for multi-Si cells with 18.2-18.4% of efficiency even dropped significantly recently.
For mono-Si, despite the slight increase of mono-Si demand, the transaction of conventional mono and mono-Si PERC cells remained low following the weak overall growth momentum in the market. Although some manufacturers witnessed stable prices, some still saw lower prices. The average trading price of mono-Si PERC cells reached RMB 1.7-1.8/W and US$ 0.225-0.235/W.
Module
Following the plummet of module orders placed by Chinese power plant developers, mono and multi-Si module prices keep declining. The average trading price of conventional multi-Si modules dropped to RMB 2.6-2.65/W and will drop further. It appears that February and March will be the months with the weakest demand in 1H18. Manufacturers are not that willing to stock before the Lunar New Year this year, and therefore demand is likely to stay weak all the way from January to after the Lunar New Year.