Although it’s rumored that the 2017 deadline for grid-connection in China may change back to June 30th, the rising prices in the entire supply chain from October to November has led to weak stock offload under such high prices. According to EnergyTrend’s observation, the average trading price of multi-Si wafers and cells have declined in December. As demand cools down in the European and US markets, the overall market will see weaker demand as well. Therefore, the prices are expected to reflect a downtrend before the Lunar New Year.
Slight tight supply situation remained in the Chinese polysilicon market. But as mid-to-downstream prices dropped further, the rise of polysilicon prices have slowed down. The average trading price of polysilicon stayed flat at RMB 135-138/kg. Since the price of multi-Si wafers has declined, polysilicon prices should peak in December and may no longer increase further in January.
Last week, the price of Chinese multi-Si wafers was adjusted by US$ 0.02/pc. This week, Taiwanese wafer makers followed suit. The average trading price of multi-Si wafers reached US$ 0.64-0.67/pc in Taiwan and RMB 5.0-5.1/pc in China. Because downstream demand slightly weakened, multi-Si wafer prices will drop further. Although the mono-Si market still witnessed slight supply shortage, the price gap has become larger between mono and multi-Si wafers. As a result, mono-Si wafer prices may be slightly revised in order to avoid affecting the future market share growth of mono-Si wafers.
Following the decline of multi-Si wafer prices, the price of high-efficiency cells dropped below US$ 0.23/W in Taiwan, also affecting the cell prices in third-party countries. Although some Chinese cell prices slightly dropped to reflect the decline of wafer prices, multi-Si cell was priced at RMB 1.8-1.85/W. Due to the significant decline of PERC module prices, the average trading price of mono-Si PERC cells dropped below US$ 0.33/W, no longer saw high gross margin like last month.
Even though the price of Chinese modules slightly increased, global module prices continued to reflect a downtrend due to weaker demand during the year-end holidays in the European and US markets. Deducting the freight fees, there’s barely a price gap among the US, European, Japanese, and Chinese markets. Module prices in the Indian market has dropped below US$ 0.32-0.35/W. On the other hand, manufacturers have announced that prices will still decline substantially in 1Q17. In other words, next year will remain challenging.