This week, owing to the announcement of lowering on-grid prices from NDRC, the local demand grew, bringing a few supports for the demand in January, 2018. In terms of supply chain, because of the expectation of weak demand for 1Q18, both mono-si wafer and multi-si wafer manufacturers have lowered the quoted prices of January to strengthen their competitiveness in the downstream sector. Thus, the focus is still on the war between mono-si wafer and multi-si wafer. Both sides will focus on each other’s range of spread to reduce prices.
Polysilicon
The polysilicon section this week was similar to last week. Under the impact of downstream si-wafer demands and the material inventory strategies from some si-wafer manufacturers, the demand remained strong. Some prices slightly increased, but there was a limitation to their growth.
Si-wafer
Although the demands of mono-si products were improved, to increase the competitiveness of mono-si products in 1Q18, the mono-si wafer’s leading manufacturers actively lowered their prices by RMB 0.2/pc, making the quoted price reach RMB 5.3-5.4/pc. The quoted price in US dollars reached USD 0.71-0.72/pc, prompting other mono-si wafer manufacturers to reduce their prices. However, owing to the previous bad condition of mono-si on the market and differences between strike prices and quoted prices, the actual impact this time was lower than RMB 0.12/pc.
On the other hand, in order to maintain the spread, the multi-si wafermanufacturers decreased the prices as well. Yet, since it happened unexpectedly, currently there are still some manufacturers without adjusted prices. It is expected that there will be a complete decrease in prices. Diamond wire saw multi-si wafer price this week was RMB 4.5-4.7/pc. Slurry sawing multi-si wafer price was RMB 4.8-5/pc.
PV cell
Although mono-si wafer and multi-si wafer lowered the quoted prices this week, PV cell manufacturers are expected to reduce the prices next week. This week, mono-si PV cell price was RMB 1.68-1.7/W and around USD 0.23/W in US dollars. Diamond wire saw multi-si PV cell price remained at RMB 1.66-1.7/W and USD 0.215-0.22/W in US dollars.
In terms of PERC cell, though the price declined this week, it started to become stable. Due to the rising demands on Japanese and European markets, it is expected that PERC products’ requirements can be increased with the competitiveness brought by previous decrease.
Module
Under the influence of the decrease for on-grid prices, this week there were some installations before the end of 2017. Since time wasn’t enough, the numbers of installations were low. However, because many systems opted to connect the grid first, the orders will be extended until January, increasing the short-term demand domestically.
In addition, owing to the increased demands in India and Japan and the continuous supply for some massive overseas tenders, the entire demand in January will remain. Yet, because the total demand in 1Q18 is largely lower than the supply, it is expected that the future module price will tend to decrease according to the prices reduction on the upstream sector such as si-wafer and PV cell.