The 630 installation rush of Chinese market started to stimulate the restocking demands from some dealers. Yet, owing to the different adjustments and releases of capacity for each sector on the supply chain and the unseen end demand, price trends turned out to be inconsistent.
Polysilicon
Due to the completion of inventory digestion for polysilicon and the limitation in supply during the overhaul in April, suppliers started to reduce the supply of low priced products. Some manufacturers even increased their quotes this week in order to reflect the short supply. The hike mainly occurred in the polysilicon price for mono-si and affected the price for multi-si. Though the polysilicon quote for multi-si didn’t rise, the entire average strike price went up slightly. Currently, there is no product with prices at RMB115/kg or lower than RMB 110/kg on the market. However, because the end market hasn’t officially generated demand, currently there is no instant purchasing pressure in the downstream. Observations will be required to see whether the strike prices can be increased generally.
Si-wafer
This week, the average price of multi-si wafer decreased slightly. The main reason was that the cheaper prices were offered to the clients who purchased in larger quantities in order to control inventory. Because it was close to the current purchasing price of PV cell dealers after price reduction, the trading volume also increased. In the short term, price will be RMB 3.6-3.8/pc and above USD 0.5/pc. However, because the downstream market has been testing the bottom line of price, there will be chances for mono-si and multi-si wafer manufacturers to lower the quotes in April in order to meet the demand on the market. It mainly depends on the competitive strategy of each manufacturer.
PV cell
Though currently there is demand on Chinese market, it isn’t strong enough to drive vertically integrated manufacturers to massively purchase PV cells. Thus, the current PV cell demand is still weak. Price in this week slightly dropped. After Taiwanese manufacturers’ multi-si PV cell prices decreased below USD 0.18/W, they declined directly to the price level of Chinese manufacturers, making mono-si and mono-si PERC PV cell prices go down simultaneously in order to maintain the reasonable spread with multi-si PV cell.
Module
China’s 630 installation rush demand is expected to be generated in April. Currently, module manufacturers don’t have the rigid demand, and prices haven’t reached a consensus. Therefore, for general PV cell, there is space for price reduction. Quote slightly decreased. Demand for high-efficiency products was stronger, so high-efficiency module price became more stable.
Recently, a lot of bid results have been released in China. The lower bid price also drove dealers to actively advance their technologies in order to meet the demands for module price on June 30 and by the end of 2018. Technologies with higher price–performance ratio such as half-cut and double-sided modules are expected to be fully adopted among the entire industry after June 30.