The Chinese solar industry has once again been impacted by the pandemic as delay in logistics and personnel allocation yielded by the recent outbreak of coronavirus in Shanghai has resulted in production reduction for related manufacturers.
Shanghai has been sitting on roughly 25K of daily confirmed cases since April 7th, and announced on the 13ththat the day before had seen a new high at 27K local cases, which means that the city has accumulated more than 200K confirmed cases since the outbreak that started in the beginning of March. Shanghai has now locked down for nearly two weeks, and the survey of the Shanghai Solar Energy Society indicates that the latest wave of outbreak in China has severely impacted production and installations of solar models, where more than half interviewed businesses expressed on the negative outcome derived from the recent development.
Market research company Jefferies pointed out from its report that plants in coastal areas adjacent to Shanghai have now suspended wafer production, which resulted in a surge of wafer prices. Analysts also pointed out another factor that is the outbreak in Xinjiang, a strategic production region multi-Si wafers, as well as the significant delay in China’s inland transportation.
Solar energy currently sits on a mainstream technology of crystalline silicon cells, and is constituted by a sizable industry chain that is concatenated by upstream, midstream, and downstream suppliers of polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules. China is a key production base of global solar energy, with 80% of global multi-Si wafers being produced in the country, of which 45% comes from Xinjiang.
With that being said, China is currently facing the new wave of outbreak, where the prolonged lockdown in Shanghai and restrictive measures in other regions are not only affecting the solar industry, but also interfering with the overall supply chain.
(Cover photo source: shutterstock)