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This week, the price movements are mostly concentrated in the mono-si supply chain. Because there were sufficient inventories for mono-si wafer and mono-si PV cell, the prices in this week have dropped, making the gap between multi-si wafer price become small. On the other hand, multi-si supply chain has largely turned to diamond wire saw technology, making mono-si products suffer great competitive pressure on prices.
This week, the prices of mono-si PV cells have fallen below those of slurry saw multi-si PV cells. Mono-si wafer price per watt has been lower than slurry saw multi-si wafer price per watt. This drop for mono-si prices is expected to be improved after the third week of December.
Polysilicon
Polysilicon price this week was stable. However, the average price of dense materials for mono-si slightly increased, enlarging the range of high price. The spread between mono-si materials and multi-si materials has been expanding gradually and has approached RMB 15/kg.
Si-wafer
Multi-si wafer this week was steady. Owing to some manufacturers’ decreasing demand for wire saw of mono-si, the strained supply of wafers made from diamond wire saws has eased. In terms of mono-si wafer, the price went down due to the recent weak demand and inventory pressure. The leading manufacturers of mono-si wafer had their own capacities of PV cell and module, so the decreases were smaller; however, during the current condition of sluggish mono-si market and the transition of PV cell manufacturers into multi-si, other small and mid-sized manufacturers which didn’t have downstream product lines suffered more inventory pressure and the decreases were obvious. This week, the mainstream price of mono-si wafer was RMB 5.4-5.5/pc, and overseas price, which is still falling, was USD 0.72-0.74/pc. The low level price from some small manufacturers has reached RMB 5.0-5.1/pc and the general price was RMB 5.2-5.3/pc.
PV cell
This week, slurry saw multi-si PV cell price has been RMB 1.71-1.74/W and diamond wire saw multi-si PV cell price was RMB 1.66-1.7/W. Mono-si PV cell price has declined to RMB 1.68-1.7/W, which was similar to diamond wire saw multi-si PV cell price. Mono-si PERC PV cell price has kept decreasing as well. Taiwan’s mono-si PERC PV cell price for efficiency of 21-21.2% was USD 0.255-0.262/W, almost approaching Chinese manufacturers’ price of RMB 1.9-2/W.
Module
The main demands of this month came from Chinese subsidy program, which had impacts on investing starters and price–performance ratio, and distributed market. Although the spread between mono and multi-si PV cell became small, the end market hasn’t reacted to the decrease in prices for mono-si supply chain because of the time difference between designing project and actual order and the spread between mono and multi-si module.
After two weeks, it is expected that the market demand will start to become weak after the end of shipping season in the end of the year. A short empty period of demand will occur, pulling the prices of mono and multi-si modules closer. Then, mono-si demand will improve. The condition of price drop for mono-si wafer and PV cell for weeks will have been solved as well.
