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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | October 26, 2017 |
As leading multi-Si wafer makers just confirmed the price quotes this week while mono-Si wafer trend remains unknown, wafer and cell price trends are still in wait-and-see mode. Most price quotes for November won’t be confirmed until next week. Yet, pressured by the downstream power plants, module makers witnessed lower product prices.
Demand for high-efficiency mono-Si and conventional mono-Si modules, particularly, will keep declining. Following the weaker profits for module and cell makers, wafer price trend is expecting to affect the trends of mono/multi-Si products.
Poly
At last week’s exhibitions, it’s rumored that China’s review of the anti-dumping and countervailing duties on the Korean imports is becoming clearer. The result is expecting to be announced recently. The increase range of Korean polysilicon prices will affect the future trend. If the tax rate is too high, it will be more difficult for polysilicon prices to drop. There may be a gap between the polysilicon prices for mono/multi-Si wafers too.
Polysilicon prices slightly increased in China, with the average trading price reaching RMB 149-153/kg. Due to the weaker wafer prices in the overseas, the overseas polysilicon prices stayed flat at US$ 14-14.2/kg.
Wafer
The diamond wire (DW) multi-Si wafer market still witnessed short supply in China. The average trading price stayed flat at RMB 4.75/piece in China and US$ 0.645-0.65/piece in the overseas. Prices for slurry wafers reached RMB 5.05-5.1/piece due to the weaker demand. The price gap between DW and slurry wafers has shrunk again.
The mono-Si wafer trend is still unclear, but following the weaker mono-Si cell and module demands, mono-Si wafer prices are expecting to slightly decline.
Cell
Since wafer prices won’t be confirmed in the next few days, most cell makers haven’t released the new price quotes for November. It seems that multi-Si cell price is more stable than mono-Si. Due to the weaker demand, mono-Si cell prices will still reflect a downtrend in the short run.
Taiwanese cells with higher prices previously have begun to see lower prices last week. The average trading price reached US$ 0.223-0.227/W for conventional multi-Si cells this week. The demands for PERC cells will remain low even if the prices drop below US$ 0.29/W. Conventional mono-Si cell prices may also start to drop following the decline of mono-Si PERC cell prices.
Module
Europe’s minimum import price (MIP) is set to be lowered quarter by quarter. The new MIP for modules will be lowered another € 3 cents to € 0.39/W for mono-Si and € 0.34/W for multi-Si modules starting from January 1st 2018. As the winter holidays approach in Europe and the US, strong demand growth has slowed down in Europe, leading to lower high-efficiency mono-Si demand.
The demands for distributed generation (DG) systems remained stable in China. There was no installation boom for DG systems, which couldn’t drive too much mono-Si module demand. Therefore, mono-Si module prices have dropped substantially in China, reaching RMB 2.85-2.95/W.