On July 7th, the Council of Agriculture from Executive Yuan announced the revision on "Operational Directions for the Examination for the Approval of the Change of Land Use by the Competent Authority of Agriculture". In the future the council will restrict the land conversion from farmland into green energy sites. This revision will impact the solar supply chain considerably.
According to TrendForce's green energy research division, agricultural land conversion projects that have recently finished legal processes accumulate about 600 MW of capacity. They are temporarily unaffected by the revision. In comparison, there are about 1.5 GW capacity of projects being reviewed, and nearly 500 MW of them are for sites that have an area of less than 2 hectares. The projects for these sites will not be permitted under the new revision. As for the rest of the projects, they will be transferred to the council of agriculture for reviewing.
For ground-mounted PV station projects, this revision will influence a lot of them. In 2020, the Taiwan government's PV installation goal was originally 2.2 GW. After the revision is imposed, the actual installation is predicted to be 1~1.2GW.
TrendForce's analyst, Sharon Chen expressed, for now, quote prices of modules and inverters are temporarily unaffected for the key reason below. The current shipments are delivered to fulfill previous orders. This revision from council of agriculture is expected to impact the modules and inverters market between 4Q20 and 1Q21.
M6 cells have been the mainstream products globally, and M6 cell components' prices might gradually stop falling
Since June, PV cell market demand has been rising. In the week of July 9th, the outlook of PV cell prices has been strong. On the whole, the PV cell market is currently undersupplied. The orders for July were steadily placed in June. Speaking of orders for August, major cell manufacturers began to negotiate orders in the first half of July.
When it comes to mono-si cells, the demand for M6 has been strong due to China's mega-sized projects' demand. By contrast, the demand for G1 was softer. Some manufacturers stated that at the current stage, buyers have bigger negotiation power for G1. The price gap between G1 and M6 is 0.02 RMB/W.
Large-sized si wafer indirectly helps evolve the supply chain's product mix. In the first half of July, tier-1 module houses' 500W+ high-power products were launched. These types of products are likely to attract downstream developers to use in large-scale PV power stations, and then PV cell products' upgrades will be accelerated.
(Photo credit: pixabay)