Multi-Si Cell Market Reaches Ceiling Price, While Mono-Si Continues to See High Demand: Price Trend

Due to the reduced number of multi-Si orders, multi-Si products will no longer witness increasing prices within mid-sectors of the supply chain this week. EnergyTrend believes multi-Si wafers and cells will soon suffer from slight decline. Prices for mono-Si products will have more support because of higher demand.
 
Polysilicon prices have risen to more than RMB 125/kg in China. Although most Chinese polysilicon manufacturers have completed conducting their equipment maintenance, supply has not yet stabilized, leading to slight supply shortage for polysilicon. The average trading price of polysilicon remained between RMB 125/kg and RMB 130/kg.
 
As manufacturers continuously release their wafer capacities this month, multi-Si wafer is not in short supply. Even though manufacturers have revised their prices upward, the actual trading prices may no longer increase. The average trading price of high-efficiency multi-Si wafers reached RMB 5.2-5.3/pc (US$ 0.68-0.70/pc). Meanwhile, mono-Si wafers suffer from serious supply shortage. Just like multi-Si wafers, top-tier mono-Si wafer makers witnessed slight increase in prices, but the price increase has slowed down, reaching US$ 0.77-0.79/pc.
 
Pressured by the rising prices from downstream sectors, the cell market has reached the ceiling price this week. The average trading price of multi-Si cells with efficiency above 18.4% reached US$ 0.235-0.25/W and RMB 1.85/W in China. The price gap is quite large between Taiwan and China. Normal mono-Si cell prices reached RMB 1.9-1.95/W and more than US$ 0.25/W in Taiwan.
 
The module market has witnessed weaker prices this month despite some of the orders waiting to be delivered by the end of this year. Top-tier module makers saw lower profits in 4Q16. Looking ahead for the future, Donald Trump’s electoral victory will bring many uncertainties to the future demand in the US. Also, China’s 13th Five-Year Plan may slow down the future growth in China. All of these will bring more uncertainties to the overall PV demand from 2017 to 2018. Given this, how to adopt more advanced technology as well as more flexible strategies in order to survive in such fluctuating environment is something PV makers keep working on.
 
(Analysis provided by Corrine Lin, translated by Christine Chen)