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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | March 07, 2019 |
Poly Price
This week, the upstream and downstream sectors of the supply chain continued negotiating polysilicon price. The mono wafer use polysilicon market, particularly, witnessed stable demand. In addition, the rising mono wafer prices can provide support to mono wafer use polysilicon prices. However, since new polysilicon capacities will be continually released in China, prices are less likely to increase further.
Polysilicon companies came up with different quotes in prices, resulting in a slightly larger price gap in the market. But overall, this week’s mainstream price stayed flat from last week. Polysilicon prices are likely to decline further in late-March with downstream sectors’ conservative attitudes toward future demand. For the overseas, more transaction has been made, but the uncertainties in the market have halted price rise.
Wafer Price
For this week’s mono and multi wafer prices, the overseas mono wafer market witnessed higher prices due to currency factors. Other prices basically remained stable. Yet, the Chinese multi wafer market has started to see loose prices, with the highest/lowest prices already declining. Although the average price remained flat at RMB 2.12/piece, next week’s mainstream price is expecting to drop significantly and so will the price for second-tier manufacturers.
Demand remained unchanged for overseas multi and Chinese mono wafers and therefore both prices stayed the same. Since the PV market will continue to witness weak demand in the second quarter, pressured by the upstream and downstream sectors of the supply chain, wafer prices are not likely to increase further. Overall, the wafer market will see the lowest price in April and May this year.
Cell Price
Module makers put a lot of pressure on PERC cell prices last week, leading to a significant decrease in PERC prices. However, cell makers have tried hard to stabilize the price of PERC cell with an efficiency of over 21.5%. In addition to that, with the stable demand for PERC cells, this week’s PERC cell with an efficiency of over 21.5% is still priced at RMB 1.25-1.26/W.
Mono PERC cell pries are expecting to drop substantially at the end of this month owing to the following factors: 1) module makers’ budget for cells is lower than the current market price 2) The capacity of mono PERC cells is still climbing.
India’s installation boom will slowly come to an end in late-March. Despite the stable multi cell prices this week, demand has gradually declined judging from the amount of cells shipped from third-party countries to India. As a consequence, the multi cell market is expecting to see lower prices following the weaker demand.
Module Price
Demand surge will occur in the 2H19 and therefore the PV market is about to enter the off-peak season. After the peak season ends for India and Japan in late-March, module demand will decline substantially. By then, mono and multi module prices will also start to drop.
The shorter off-peak season this year will allow the market demand to gradually rebound in June after hitting the bottom in May. As a result, the module market will see limited price drop this year. Module prices will even slightly rebound in the 2H19 following the rising prices for mid-to-upstream sectors of the supply chain due to the demand surge in the end of this year.
PV Glass Price
Last week, PV glass prices were still negotiated by buy-side and sell-side. The market generally saw an increase of RMB 1-3 per square meter with the new transaction continually being made this week. Starting from late-2018, the higher PV glass prices had certainly pushed up module cost, but as the off-peak season soon arrives, PV glass prices may have reached a high point recently.