Image: Wuxi Suntech
EnergyTrend said this week that prices have been rising across the entire PV industry supply chain since the middle of July, after two separate incidents at factories owned by Daqo and GCL-Poly disrupted global supplies of polysilicon. Statistics from the Taiwanese market research firm show that supply issues have now spread to solar cell and panel production, in addition to the downstream business.
Polysilicon prices continued to rise sharply this week. Silicon for monocrystalline products rose to RMB83 ($11.90)/kg, and RMB55 ($0.79)/kg for multicrystalline products. Wafer giant Longi ramped up its wafer prices two times by 15% over those of June. It also raised the prices of G1 and M6 cells by around RMB0.90/watt. The outlook for module prices is less clear, but several major players have anonymously confirmed that increases are inevitable after the SNEC exhibition in Shanghai this weekend. Price growth could trigger significant cost increases for both balance of system and levelized cost of energy. Some developers may even postpone their projects to next year.
State Power Investment Corp. (SPIC) has revealed plans to build a 4 GW renewable energy complex in China’s remote Xinjiang region. The project will be built in Hami and construction is expected to start later this year. The project will feature several renewable energy technologies, including solar PV, wind, concentrated solar power, and large-scale storage, China’s largest state-owned power investment company said.
Wuxi Suntech has completed the first 1.5 GW phase of a 10 GW capacity expansion plan. With the new capacity at its factory in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, the company’s total module capacity stands at 6 GW, including production facilities in the adjacent city of Changzhou. “We will reach up to 10 GW by the end of this year,” the PV module manufacturer told pv magazine. The additional 4 GW will be added at its factories in Yangzhou and Zhenjiang, also in Jiangsu province. For the first phase of the expansion plan, the company invested around RMB490 million.
Sungrow is launching several new products covering residential, distribution, and storage systems at the SNEC exhibition in Shanghai this week. It will present its new series of 8 kW to 25 kW three-phase residential inverters. The SG33/50CX, SG100CX models are for distributed-generation PV plants. Sungrow will also offer its new SG136TX, SG225HX, and SG3125HV inverter solutions.
Source: pv magazine
