According to the weekly price survey conducted by EnergyTrend, the contract prices of Si wafer and solar cell have shown a large decrease, while the polysilicon price still remained the same. On the other hand, due to weak market demand momentum, the module contract price has widely fluctuated, and the difference has reached $0.1/Watt.
As the survey showed, the contract price of upstream of the solar industry, polysilicon, has increased by 7.16%, compared with that of March, and come to $66.4/kg. However, there is a decrease of 5.35% in the average contract price of Si wafer, to $3.4/piece. On the other hand, the contract price of mono-Si wafer has dropped by 5.62%, to 3.525/Watt. Moreover, the contract price of solar cell has fallen by 7%, to 1.17/Watt, due to slow recovery of market demand. Finally, the module market price is affected by manufacturers selling at low prices, and the contract price has fluctuated as a result. The average has slightly dropped by 2.88%, to 1.62/Watt.
According to EnergyTrend’s survey, the European market demand has not shown obvious recovery up till early second quarter of the year, which results in a great pressure for solar cell and module price quotations. Although the contract price of April has been released, manufacturers indicated that they will still continue the negotiation with their suppliers, and hope upstream manufacturers can be more aggressive to adjust the price in correspondence with the current market situation. From EnergyTrend’s observation, manufacturers still see the spot price as a main reference in early 2Q11. However, since new entrants have limited capital and capacities, they are the price takers and they might face even more serious challenges of sales price, profit margin, and utilization rate during market downturn. Smaller manufacturers experience price war launched by big manufacturers in the spot market and retain weak price negotiation power in the contract market as a result.