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On the markets with low BOS costs such as China and India, high efficiency product mono-si PERC PV cell has weaker competitiveness in price–performance ratio. However, recently, the increasing demand of the distributed system in China on end market has made mono-si PERC price decrease. Due to the demand on the market, the rest of the sectors remained stable. Demand from the Chinese market is expected to maintain its momentum for three to four weeks. Then, the demand will turn weak. After 1Q18, it will change to India and Japan.
Polysilicon
This week, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the result of China’s double reverse tax rate for the polysilicon suppliers in Korea. Although the average tax rate increased, the tax rate of OCI, which supplied the largest amount for China, only changed from 2.4% to 4.4%. In terms of the current price of RMB 148/kg, there is only RMB 3/kg for bargaining. Presently, sales of polysilicon have remained full. There are chances that OCI will transfer the tax rate cost to the downstream sector. However, because polysilicon price has remained high for a long time, the quoted price is likely to rise completely.Their final transaction price, on the other hand, will only experience an increase of RMB 1-2/kg.
Si-wafer
Mono-si and multi-si wafer prices have remained stable this week. However, because of the weak demand for mono-si PERC PV cell on the market, stock clearance of mono-si wafer suffered the impact again. The PV cell manufacturers, which are more flexible on the production line, have transferred part of the mono-si production line to multi-si in order to increase the utilization rate, making the unbalanced demands and supplies of diamond wire saw multi-si wafer and mono-si wafer become severe. For multi-si wafer, because mono-si wafer price didn’t fall, currently its price hasn’t declined yet. Thus, price is likely to remain steady until the middle of December.
PV cell
Because the prices of mono-si and multi-si wafer didn’t decrease, mono-si and multi-si PV cell prices basically remained flat this week, except mono-si PERC PV cell price. The reason why mono-si PERC PV cell price has declined is that the demands in Europe and the US became weak. Under the influences of the removal of MIP by the European Union and the sluggish demand on the US market, mono-si PERC had to reduce previous high profit in order to maintain its competitiveness compared with other competitors which had higher price–performance ratio. In addition, because the weak situation on the markets in Europe and the US will remain until 1Q18, mono-si PERC had to speed up increasing the price–performance ratio to take over Japanese market and Chinese market of distributed system in 1Q18.
Module
With the support of lowering prices on the supply chains in previous weeks, module price decreased as well and part of the end demand appeared. Meanwhile, because the demand of distributed system in China started to reach its peak, the market this week experienced a boom instead of the sluggish situation in late October. However, because the demand still focused on Chinese local market and some overseas markets which pursued price–performance ratio, demand for high efficiency product was poor, lowering the prices of Southeast Asia’s and Korea’s manufacturers which mainly exported goods to Europe and the US.
Module demand is expected to remain steady in China until the middle of December, before shifting into markets such as India and Japan in 1Q18.
