Price trend this week has continued the trends of the last two weeks. Despite the upturn in demand, upstream polysilicon price has become unstable due to capacity overhaul; si-wafer price is in a dilemma under the impact of increasing upstream material price and decreasing downstream PV cell price; PV cell price declined because of the lowering MIP; module price started to slightly go down owing to the drop of PV cell price. This trend meets the expectations of 2016 and 2017 made by developers.
Polysilicon
This week, polysilicon price has slightly increased. The spot market is influenced by the delayed overhaul from Q3 to Q4 by major manufacturers. Therefore, the average sales price slightly went up. Nevertheless, the overall trend is stable.
Si-wafer
Si-wafer sector is in a seesaw battle between the upstream and downstream of the industry chain: upstream polysilicon price is still high while downstream PV cell and module prices decreased. Si-wafer manufacturers have to make a choice between profit and market. Because none of the manufacturers have reached a consensus for the market, quoted prices remain flat. The demand of diamond wire cut multi-si wafer is stable, but the output is still under the limitation of wire material and capacity. The situation has prompted some manufacturers to increase their high prices, which has caused average prices to grow.
PV cell
The quoted price of multi-si cell in Taiwan has gotten closer to China’s USD 0.225/W this week. Because the support on PV cell market transfers to China’s module manufacturers, Taiwanese manufacturers have suffered more pressures. PERC PV cell price has dropped this week. The competition has become severe after the European Union lowered the trade barrier. High efficiency mono-si PERC PV cell has to compete with low efficiency PERC and Chinese manufacturers. Besides, the demand in the US has decreased, which has turned Europe into the world’s top choice target market for high efficiency capacity. These all reflect the increasing sales pressure of high efficiency product which results in the drop of price. Currently, China-made mono-si PERC price is RMB 2.05-2.2/W and Taiwan-made mono-si PERC price is USD 0.28-0.3/W.
Module
Benefiting from the decrease in PV cell price, average module price slightly declined this week, meeting the expectation of lowering module price on the market. The world’s market demand in Q4 focuses on China, India, Japan and Turkey. In addition, there are shipments for large scale tenders in South America. The stable demand supports module and PV cell. However, the following trend still has to wait until November, when Chinese distributed system demand expands.