Production capacity advances in China and Korea triggered price decrease

TAIWAN: According to the Energy Trend’s latest survey, polysilicon spot price has shown a significant decrease. However, the polysilicon price quotation remained at $50/kg, and trading prices ranged between $51/kg and $53/kg. Following last week’s downward trend, this week’s average price came to $52.55/kg, a 2.92 percent decrease.Source: Energy Trend, Taiwan.

The mono-Si wafer trading prices have also declined, ranging from $2.5/piece and $2.6/piece; the multi-Si wafer trading prices were between $1.95/piece and $2.05/piece. Both multi-Si wafer and mono-Si wafer average prices have also decreased by 1.85 percent and 1.52 percent, respectively, arriving at the price of $2.013/piece and $2.592/piece.

This week, the cell and module market prices remained high at $0.9/Watt due to Europe’s strong demand for high conversion efficiency solar cell. However lower quality products have encountered a fierce price competition, with the price reaching as low as $0.7/Watt. The survey also revealed that average solar cell price dropped by 2.01 percent to $0.78/Watt while the average module market price declined by 1.19 percent to $1.242/Watt.

Since the demand prospects for the late third quarter to fourth quarter of 2011 remained unclear, manufacturers have taken a conservative attitude towards the polysilicon inventory level. Medium and small-scale manufacturers, dominating the spot market are becoming stringent in monitoring inventory control since they are unable to weather market changes as well as their top-tier counterparts.

On the other hand, as polysilicon production capacities are about to increase in China and Korea, the downstream PV manufacturers believe that polysilicon price pressure will rise, in turn affecting manufacturers’ procurement intentions. EnergyTrend therefore projects that the polysilicon price is expected to reach $45/kg by the end of 2011.