PV manufacturers are still conservative about market demand even though the result of the US-China anti-dumping preliminary verdict will be announced soon. These circumstances have led to weak PV demand in July 2014 and slow stock clearance have led to high inventory levels within the overall supply chain. Recent market prices have also substantially declined and certain quotations even decreased below manufacturers' breakeven point, which in turn led to lowest OEM prices in recent times, according to EnergyTrend.
"Among all PV products, polysilicon is the one that has relatively stable pricing. However, since more people have requested to re-negotiate polysilicon prices, and contract material clearance was slow in June, manufacturers have started to purchase less polysilicon or even stopped purchasing it. On the other hand, wafer and module price quotes continued to drop, with multi-si wafer prices dropping below US$0.90/piece to US$0.88/piece," said Arthur Hsu, research manager of EnergyTrend.
Price quotes for high-efficiency multi-si cell technology have dropped to around US$0.35/watt, with the lowest being US$0.32/watt, and that for normal-grade dropped to US$0.33/watt, with the lowest being US$0.3/watt. Most mono-si cell prices remained at above US$0.40/watt, which had less impact. Meanwhile, the lowest quotation for high-efficiency multi-si modules came to US$0.55/watt and that for normal-grade dropped to US$0.52/watt. Mono-si module prices remained at above US$0.60/watt, the firm said.
"OEM prices declined as product prices dropped. Cell OEM prices reached US$0.12-0.13/watt and that for wafers dropped below US$0.53/piece, which showed that sellers continued to give in on prices to increase shipments and utilization rates," added Hsu.
