The major products in PV EXPO 2013 are mostly high conversion efficiency products, and efficiency is also emphasized in peripheral products including materials, construction technology, manufacturing equipments, and other components. Subsidy is continually revised downwards, and the common goal among industries is to achieve grid parity--- in other words, to make solar power a contender for widespread development without subsidies or government support. Efficiency improvement is no longer dependent on a single field, but instead the cooperation of the upstream and downstream of the industry chain; only when cost is optimized and efficiency is continually improved will the large potential PV market turn into practical business.
Although high conversion efficiency has always been the goal of each manufacturer, it was even more emphasized in this year’s PV EXPO; several industries such as BenQ and JASolar displayed over 17% of such products, LG and Panasonic displayed over 18%, ReneSolar displayed 19%, SunPower displayed 20%, and Panasonic displayed 24.7% of high efficiency products. Even though they have not yet entered the mass production stage, it is obvious that high efficiency was their main focus.
On the other hand, manufacturers at the exposition also indicated that policy still remains crucial to the global PV industry development. Though the ultimate goal of the industries is to completely extricate themselves from government subsidy, there is still a long way to go before achieving this goal and thus the stability of the policy could still greatly affect the global PV industry at the present stage. Related industries indicated that although the market has revealed reversion signals, the recent trade war effects are still unfavorable to the global market recovery; emerging markets will become the main driving force of market growth in the next few years, while earlier developed markets such as Europe, US, and Japan remain the basis of the global solar industry. If the Sino-US trade friction cannot be successfully solved, the long-term development of the global PV market may be crippled.
