In the recent, China, India and the U.S. unveiled ambitious solar installation targets up to 100GW. China targets to install a total of 100GW of solar by 2020, India sets an 100GW goal by 2022, while Hilary Clinton, a candidate of U.S.’s next president, announced to install 140GW of solar in her first term. The global solar market will be highly correlated with these bold policies.
China’s Twelfth Five-year Plan will be ended by 2015 with an anticipated solar installation totaling 45GW. The Thirtieth Five-year Plan is now under establishing, and EnergyTrend expects that the Chinese government would increase the solar installation target from approximately 20GW per year up to 30GW between 2016 and 2020. The cumulative installation could reach 170GW by 2020 if the anticipation were realized.
Hilary Clinton, the U.S.’s presidential candidate, unveiled her aggressive renewable energy policy. She aims to have 500 million solar panels installed across the U.S., and targets at powering all American homes with renewable resources by 2027. Her first policy represents an annual solar installation as high as 30GW from 2016 to 2020. If most of the solar arrays were installed atop rooftops, the solar panels will cover 30% rooftops of American buildings. As a result, how to carry out the policies will be the top issue for Hilary.
Aside from China and USA, India, a nation that her government established MNRE in early 2015, announced to add 100GW of solar power by 2022. India might rise as the world’s largest solar market in three years, the growth momentum should be seriously estimated.
According to EnergyTrend’s research, China’s and the U.S.’s market shares in 2015 would respectively reach 30% and 18%. Taking India’s 3.5GW installation projection into account, the total market share of the three countries will surpass 50% of the global demand in 2015. However, China is the only country that is highly possible to achieve its goal, said Angus Kao, analyst at EnergyTrend. The U.S. market should boost again after production capacity of high efficiency is enough for supplying demands of domestic rooftop markets. India’s solar market, on the other hand, will start to grow when issues include capital, gird infrastructure and local policy are all conquered.
It is predicable that the solar market in 2016 to 2017 will be different from the situation in 2014 and 2015 because of the switch of mainstream markets.
This Week’s Spot Price
During this week, supply and demand of polysilicon was balanced. Quote of China’s first-tier polysilicon was US$16.1/kg. In contrary, demand to high efficiency multi-si wafers was stronger, yet the average price remained flat. Spot price of multi-si wafer stuck at US$0.825/piece, while spot price of mono-si wafers dropped.
PV cells’ supply is sufficient, and demand to cells with conversion efficiency between 17.8% and 18% is stronger than other ones. Quote of high efficiency multi-si PV cells was US$0.313/W, and of Taiwan-made multi-si cells was US$0.294/W. Quote of China-made multi-si PV cells stuck at US$0.289/W.
As the price trend overall was flat during the week, prices of PV modules will be as smooth as prices of wafers and cells. High efficiency 260W multi-si PV modules’ spot price was US$0.538/W, and 270-275W mono-si PV modules’ quote was US$0.61/W, the same with in the last week.
