From pv magazine Global

The Chinese Module Marker (CMM), the OPIS benchmark assessment for TOPCon modules from China was assessed at $0.100/W, down $0.005/W week-to-week. Mono PERC module prices were assessed at $0.090/W, down $0.005/W from the previous week. The new record lows for both prices according to OPIS data comes as market activity remains subdued on low demand.

Module makers have reduced prices in a bid to secure new orders and maintain cash flow with tradable indications for TOPCon modules heard at $0.10/W Free-on-Board (FOB) China.

Solar modules exported to Europe continue to contend with elevated freight rates on matters in the Red Sea. OPIS heard freight rates of about $0.0164-0.0175/W (about high $6,000s-$7,000/FEU) for shipments from Shanghai to Rotterdam. While this has affected shipments, it presents an opportunity for module sellers to reduce their inventories in Europe.

A market observer said that prices during Intersolar did not move and remained around $0.10/W FOB China (+/-0.3cts) and that despite the high installations season just starting, the installation demand for Europe this year did not seem very strong, at least in the utility-scale space.

Latin America continues to look weak with the price competition in this market described as “intense” by a module seller. Prices in the Brazilian market are generally lower than in other markets as buyers are price-sensitive. TOPCon prices to Brazil had fallen to the range of $0.08-0.09/W FOB China with prices at the low end offered by Tier2-3 module sellers, the module seller added.

A buyer noted that current U.S. Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) TOPCon prices have risen to the low-to-mid $0.30/W range. This pricing includes the 201 bifacial tariffs but excludes the new antidumping/countervailing duties. With the exemption set to lapse mid-week, another market source told OPIS that “any new deals would be subject to the 14.25% Section 201 tariffs and will likely push pricing into the mid $0.30s/W in 2024”.

Domestic Chinese demand remained weak amid mounting inventory pressure. Further price cuts in the coming weeks were expected as module sellers clear inventories to generate cash flow. The majority of market participants OPIS surveyed expected TOPCon prices to drop below CNY0.8/W or $0.099/W on a FOB China equivalent, which is the current cost of production for integrated producers.

The operating rates of integrated module sellers remained between 60-80%, according to the Silicon Industry of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association. Estimates of June module production capacity stood at 50 GW, down from 52 GW previously expected and down 5 GW from May, the association said.

China exported 83.3 GW of modules in the period January-April marking a year-on-year increase of 20%, according to latest data from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The total value of the module shipments for the period January-April reached $12.7 billion.

Looking ahead in the FOB China market, broader bearish conditions prevent any upticks in module prices in the short term although continued production cuts into July could give some respite to supply pressures.

OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.

From pv magazine 6/24

Tariff and trade tensions, tempered by favorable industrial policies courtesy of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have prompted multiple solar and storage manufacturers to announce plans to set up facilities in the United States, some for the first time.

To date, most firms eyeing US ventures are in China, reflecting the global dominance of Chinese PV and storage companies. Companies based in India are in the mix, too, followed by European producers and a roster of businesses from across Southeast Asia and South Korea.

With all this interest comes the realization that many business practices that are considered normal in the United States, differ – sometimes in big ways – from other parts of the world. Take employee parking, for example. Companies based in parts of the world where private vehicle ownership is not the norm may look at the acres of car park space at US manufacturing sites and see wasted potential.

On the other hand, some non-US employers are surprised when they hear worker dormitories are not standard at manufacturing sites. Or that the open labor market, not a government ministry, is the primary source for workers. Some find it a foreign concept that most Americans are willing to commute a significant distance to a job they secured on their own.

Other cultural differences include the layers of decision-makers who need to sign off on manufacturing plants, the subtle differences between product and equipment standards, and the emergence in some parts of the United States of opposition to any investments by Chinese companies.

Location and equipment

Site selection provides another challenge. Many available buildings were originally built for warehouse or distribution purposes. Such operations typically use little energy, at least when compared with solar and battery production lines. Electrical service upgrades often become necessary, with upgrades sometimes required all the way to the substation. In other cases, new substations need to be built from scratch.

That means the prospective manufacturer must work with local utilities to secure upgrades. Sometimes this can be done relatively quickly, with the utility able to locate transformers within a year.

However, equipment acquisition often proves more difficult. In the case of transformers and related substation equipment, wait times of several years are becoming more common. That means a non-US manufacturer needs to be something of a utility expert, able to understand and work not only across multiple business types (investor-owned, cooperative, municipal, and so on), but also with regulated or unregulated regimes which vary by state.

Even when it comes to commonplace equipment such as a facility’s air conditioner, lead times of two to three years are increasingly reported for 40-ton units and larger. Fewer than a dozen suppliers exist that manufacture equipment of this size for the US market and each typically produces only a handful of units each week, to meet global demand.

Matter of standards

Even for European companies, different quality, certification, and manufacturing standards need to be addressed. That’s because companies working in the European Union typically are more familiar with the bloc’s CE mark for health, safety, and environmental protection. Products that have received the CE mark are not automatically UL (Underwriters Laboratories)-listed for sale in the United States. In part, this is because some product types with the CE mark do not have to be third-party certified and are not necessarily compliant with US standards.

Rarely does a one-to-one equivalency exist so qualification testing often needs to be performed for European products and equipment to be used in the United States.

A further layer of complexity often exists here. The certification must satisfy not a federal or state official but, in many cases, an official as local as a fire marshal. These local code administrators are instrumental in deciding whether every aspect of a facility complies with a host of safety standards. Only after a fire marshal signs off can a manufacturing plant be occupied and begin production.

Multiple logistical issues can also surprise non-US firms. For example, an industrial site in the middle of the country might look like an ideal solution and then be rejected because it is too far from a deepwater port, which adds to transportation expenses and delays. Or an industrial site close to a deepwater port on one of the coasts may have an unacceptably large risk of suffering natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. A site in the fast-growing and sunbaked Southwest of the United States may lack access to long-term, reliable water supplies.

Managing differences

Any company looking to base itself in the United States should develop a set of qualifying categories that rank the importance of a range of inputs, from available real estate to utility service upgrades to workforce availability, as they pertain to specific projects.

One outcome of such an exercise is that it’s rare for two seemingly similar businesses to favor the same site, let alone the same state. While many factory projects look the same from the outside, their specific needs can be quite different. One emerging factor is the policy – written and unwritten – in some states that discourages Chinese-owned factories. There are still states that welcome Chinese ownership, however.

At the federal level, there is the No Official Giveaways of Taxpayers’ Income to Oppressive Nations (NO GOTION) Act. This is a bill in the House of Representatives that would prohibit companies affiliated with certain regimes around the world from benefiting from IRA tax credits. It is likely that companies that have begun manufacturing prior to the bill’s passage will be affected differently.

Renewed interest in, and support of, domestic US solar manufacturing is opening attractive opportunities for foreign-based companies to set up production lines. Cultural differences exist, however, and need to be proactively addressed to help ensure a project’s profitability.

About the author: Mark Hagedorn is the vice president of manufacturing services for Clean Energy Associates.

From pv magazine 6/24

AD/CVD tariffs for US-imported solar components from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia have been paused since 2022. Should they resume, tariffs of between 50% and 250% of the cost of shipped goods would apply to components from China that are found to have been dumped in the affected Southeast Asian nations for import to the United States.

The tariff moratorium is set to expire in June 2024 and a new AD/CVD investigation has been launched. A petition signed by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee coalition was filed in late April 2024 and, on May 15, 2024, the US International Trade Commission and the Department of Customs announced an investigation would be launched into suppliers from the four Southeast Asian nations.

Petition filers

Companies that signed the petition include First Solar, Qcells, Meyer Burger, REC Silicon, and others that have invested in US solar manufacturing capacity. The petitioners said the US solar “manufacturing renaissance” was threatened by heavily subsidized Chinese cells and modules.

“China’s unfair and illegal trade practices have inundated the market with dumped solar panels, undercutting the US ability to compete,” said the group. Solar module prices have fallen by more than half over the last 12 months to a record low, according to online solar trading platform pvXchange.

If US solar developers sourced 55% of solar goods domestically, 900,000 US jobs would be supported by 2035, said the petitioners. They added that “onshoring” the solar supply chain would cut solar manufacturing emissions by 30%.

Difficult position

With almost 80% of US solar modules imported from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, trade measures could threaten supply.

The US Energy Information Administration said the threat of AD/CVD tariffs in 2022 had prompted delays or the cancellation of around 20% of utility-scale solar generation capacity.

Investment bank Roth Capital has been told a “non-trivial amount of [solar] projects that have not secured modules, especially for 2025,” could be affected by AD/CVD measures. Projects that have already secured modules through 2025 should be unaffected.

AD/CVD action could drive US module prices for utility-scale projects to $0.40/W to $0.50/W of panel generation capacity, Clean Energy Associates (CEA) told a Roth Capital webinar. Late 2023 saw such module prices fall to a record low $0.13/W and CEA estimated Southeast Asian imports would remain at around $0.20/W without new AD/CVD action.

CEA anticipates new AD/CVD measures could cause a bottleneck of duty-free PV cells and flip an oversupplied solar market into shortages. The company estimated the 18 GW of annual crystalline silicon cell production capacity outside AD/CVD-investigated nations in early 2024 – plus 17 GW of US-based thin film capacity – would be less than projected US demand in 2024.

“This means that there will likely be duties applied to some of the modules serving the US market – or the cells imported to make these modules – starting later this year,” said CEA. “This is likely to greatly reduce import levels, as occurred in the second quarter of 2022 when the anti-circumvention case was filed. If these duties are passed along to buyers, they will introduce uncertainty to the financial models that projects depend on. This will potentially cause projects to be delayed, canceled, and/or sold.”

Crunch time

With the US International Trade Commission investigation launched, a preliminary determination of material injury, or the threat of material injury to domestic manufacturers must be determined within 45 days of the filing, from May 15, 2024. A final determination would likely be made by spring 2025.

Canadian Solar, a leading solar panel supplier with operations in Southeast Asia, responded to the investigation by calling into question South Korean owned company Qcells’ status as a US manufacturer. It said that the company is a “US importer of subject merchandise” and “primarily a foreign producer.”

Qcells, which primarily manufactures in Malaysia, is also the largest crystalline silicon module producer in the United States, manufacturing around 5.1 GW of modules there annually. The company said in early 2023, that it plans to invest more than $2.5 billion in 3.3 GW of solar ingot, wafer, cell, and module factories in the US state of Georgia.

Since the passage of the US Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which contained rich incentives for clean energy manufacturing, multinational solar manufacturers have begun to move operations into the United States. In 2023, Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, and Longi all announced 5 GW solar module manufacturing facilities, potentially adding a combined 15 GW of US-based solar production capacity. To put that investment into context, each of those factories would represent $200 million to $600 million in capital expenditure. Many gigawatt-scale US factory announcements have been made by global suppliers since then, with many new fabs and expansions announced over the past two years.

Capacity mismatch

Much of the announced capacity in the United States concerns the final step of the solar module supply chain: module assembly. If the United States wants to establish an independent solar supply chain, it will need to incentivize the production of polysilicon, solar ingots, wafers, and solar cells, in order to feed this module demand.

CEA said there is currently a mismatch in US production capacity, with much of the focus on module assembly. The company expects around 30 GW of annual module manufacturing capacity in the United States by 2027 but only 3 GW of ingot and wafer lines and 17 GW of polysilicon facilities.

Wood Mackenzie has released its PV module manufacturer rankings for 2023. The company said it evaluated 30 manufacturers on nine criteria: manufacturing experience, manufacturing capacity, vertical integration, capacity utilization rates, technology maturity, R&D, financial conditions, adherence to environmental social governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and availability of third-party certifications.

JA Solar grabbed the top spot in the rankings with a score of 82.9, followed by Trina Solar with 81.7, JinkoSolar with 80.8, Canadian Solar with 78.5, and Longi and Risen sharing the fifth position with 78.0. The other six positions were taken by Tongwei with 77.6, Astronergy with 76.3,  Hanwha Qcells with 75.8, DMEGC with 74.1, Elite Solar with 71.4, and Boviet Solar with 71.2.

“Eight out of the 12 ranked module manufacturers are self-sufficient in cell capacity,” WoodMac said in a statement. “Tongwei and Risen are the only manufacturers in the ranking that are fully vertically integrated through the whole supply chain from polysilicon to module.”

The research firm also reveals that seven of the top 10 manufacturers could exceed 100 GW of annual module production capacity by 2027, with their combined cell capacity reaching 830 GW by the end of 2026. It also noted that all of the manufacturers continue to expand their capacity, despite massive overcapacity in the market.

“At the same time, manufacturers are focused on becoming more vertically integrated,” said Wood Mackenzie.

The list was scored via nine weighted criteria:

From pv magazine global

Chinese solar module manufacturer Longi unveiled a new module series based on its proprietary hybrid passivated back contact (HPBC) cell technology.

“Longi’s first-generation BC products were primarily positioned for the rooftop market, but the second generation of BC is entirely different,” the company said in a statement. “The Hi-MO 9 panel is mainly positioned for the ground-mounted utility market.”

The new product is available in eight versions with power output ranging from 625 W to 660 W and power conversion efficiency spanning from 23.1% to 24.4%. The open-circuit voltage is between 53.30 V and 54.00 V and the short-circuit current is between 14.85 A and 15.41 A.

The double-glass modules have a temperature coefficient of -0.28%/C and a maximum system voltage of 1,500. Their size is 2,382 mm x 1,134 mm x 30 mm and their weight is 33.5 kg. They also feature IP68 junction boxes, an anodized aluminum alloy frame, and 2.0 mm coated tempered glass.

The new products come with a 12-year product warranty and a 30-year linear power output warranty, with the 30-year end power output being guaranteed to be no less than 88.85% of the nominal output power.

“In the second-generation BC product, the company has comprehensively optimized the bifaciality issue,” the company said, noting that the bifaciality factor cannot generally be very outstanding in back contact technologies. “However, taking this into full consideration, the overall life-cycle power generation capability we display now an improvement of 6% to 8%,” it added, without providing more details.

The company has not revealed yet all the technical aspects of its HPBC cell technology. It previously said it’s an extension of p-type interdigitated back-contact (IBC) technology that combines the structural advantages of PERC, TOPCon, and IBC solar. Additionally, BC technology can be combined with p-type wafers, for which Longi has substantial production capacities, giving it an advantage over the more common IBC technology.

In March, Longi launched its Hi-MO X6 Explorer and Hi-MO X6 Guardian modules, and last week it introduced the Hi-MO X6 Scientist panel.

Total U.S. solar module manufacturing capacity grows by 71% in Q1 2024 According to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q2 2024 report, solar module manufacturing production capacity increased by over 11 GW.

World’s largest solar plant goes online in China  China Green Development Group has switched on the 3.5 GW Midong solar project in Urumqi, China’s Xinjiang region. The project required an investment of CNY 15.45 billion ($2.13 billion).

U.S. commercial real estate to host VPP-connected flywheels and batteries U.S.-based technology provider Torus has agreed to supply nearly 26 MWh of energy storage for Gardner Group’s commercial real estate portfolio. The project will integrate battery and flywheel energy storage systems (BESS, FESS) with Torus’ proprietary energy management platform.

Solar panel import tariffs are affecting the industry by increasing prices by up to 286% Clean Energy Associates released a summary of the seven solar module trade policies and solar panel import tariffs currently in place, including AD/CVD rulings, Section 201/302, and the Uyghur Protection Act. These tariffs have significantly increased, or will increase, the cost of hardware imports into the United states – predominantly from China, but not exclusively – by 91% to 286%.

IEA urges countries to accelerate renewables deployment A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that the world could miss out on a target of 11,000 GW of global renewables capacity by the end of the decade, as agreed at COP28. It also predicts that solar will become the world’s largest source of installed renewable capacity, surpassing hydropower.

California bill amends ruling that gutted value of solar for multi-meter properties If approved, SB 1374 would give schools, farms, apartments and other multi-meter properties “the same treatment” as single-family homes in solar crediting and billing structures.

From pv magazine Global

China Green Electricity Investment of Tianjin, a subsidiary of China Green Development Group (CGDG), has switched on the 3.5 GW Midong PV farm in Urumqi, China’s Xinjiang region.

The PV facility is currently the world’s largest solar plant. Prior to commissioning, Chinese state-owned utility Huanghe Hydropower Development started operating the world’s largest solar park, a 2.2 GW facility, in October 2020.

China Construction Eighth Engineering Division Corp and Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina) carried out the construction of the Mindong project in stages. The installation required an investment of CNY 15.45 billion. It features more than 5.26 million 650 W monocrystalline bifacial double-glass PV panels supplied by an unnamed manufacturer.

The extensive infrastructure of the project includes the installation of 1.23 million supporting piles, five 220 kV booster stations, and more than 208 km of transmission lines connecting the array to the grid via a 750 kV substation.

China Green Development Group (CGDG), established in December 2020, is a major energy investment entity under the central Chinese government, succeeding the former State Grid-owned Luneng Group. Managed directly by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), CGDG focuses on the investment, construction, and management of renewable energy projects. The group aims to achieve more than 20 GW of renewable energy installations by the end of 2024.

From pv magazine Global

Chinese solar module producer JinkoSolar said it has achieved a 33.24% power conversion efficiency for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell based on n-type wafers.

The company said the results have been certified by the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology under the CAS. In its previous attempts, JinkoSolar achieved a cell efficiency of 32.33% for the same device configuration.

“This breakthrough in conversion efficiency for the perovskite/TOPCon tandem solar cell has been achieved through various materials and technology innovations including ultra-thin poly-Si passivated contact technology, novel light-trapping technology, intermediate recombination layer with high light transmittance and high carrier mobility, and efficient surface passivation technology using hybrid materials,” the manufacturer said, without providing any additional technical details.

Researchers from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) recently said that the practical power conversion efficiency potential of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells could reach up to 39.5%. Researchers said exceeding this efficiency threshold requires a change in cell architecture, replacing buckminsterfullerene (C60) with a more transparent electron transport layer, and finding more transparent alternatives to indium tin oxide (ITO) layers.

The United States federal government recently made a rapid series of international trade policy changes and updates to incentives for clean energy projects and manufactured components.

Clean Energy Associates (CEA), a clean energy advisory company, issued a report with reactions to this recent series of policy changes, including expected market impacts on energy storage. Find a report on the market impacts for the solar supply chain here.

Tariffs tripled

On May 14, 2024, the Biden Administration announced changes to section 301 tariffs on Chinese products.

For energy storage, Chinese lithium-ion batteries for non-EV applications from 7.5% to 25%, more than tripling the tariff rate. This increase goes into effect in 2026.

There is also a general 3.4% tariff applied lithium-ion battery imports. Altogether, the full tariff paid by importers will increase from 10.9% to 28.4%.

Lithium-ion battery modules, packs, and container blocks are generally categorized under import code 8507.6020, and it said the tariff change will likely apply to imports under this code. CEA said further clarity is needed for the correct import code for lithium-ion cells.

CEA said it expects the tariff increase to raise total costs for U.S. integrators by about 11% to 16%.

“The delay to 2026 for the rate change on non-EV batteries gives the market time to adapt and for more non-China LFP facilities to come online to serve U.S. customers,” said CEA.

CEA said this includes LG’s LFP cell factory which is currently under construction in Arizona.

The report said the cost increases due to the new tariff rates may affect some projects with marginal economics, but overall CEA expects demand contraction due to the 301 tariff change to be “limited.”

Domestic content

On May 16, 2024 the U.S. Treasury Department updated its guidance for accessing the 10% domestic content tax credit adder made available through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This relates to both the Section 48/48E Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and the Section 45/45Y Production Tax Credit (PTC).

IRS requires that structural construction components like steel and rebar foundation posts for solar projects are 100% U.S. manufactured. The rest of the materials, listed as “manufactured products,” must include domestic content for 40% of the cost, increasing to 55% over time.

The new guidance provides simplified calculations for assuming cost inputs to achieve the required threshold of domestic content to achieve the bonus. Find more information on how to calculate domestic content bonus eligibility here.

“Many project owners who CEA has spoken with have had difficulty getting direct cost information from their suppliers,” said the report from CEA. “Because this new method allows project owners to access the Domestic Content Bonus without this information, it makes the bonus easier to access.”

Read the related story: “Market impacts from the recent flurry of solar policy actions“

The United States federal government recently made a rapid series of international trade policy changes and updates to incentives for clean energy projects. The following is a roundup of these changes, along with insights on market impact.

AD/CVD initiated

On May 15, the Department of Commerce initiated its investigation for alleged antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) infractions in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia. Historically, tariffs have ranged as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) must now make a preliminary determination on the investigation by June 10, 2024. ITC will determine whether the domestic industry has suffered injury from import of dumped goods.

Solar supply chain expert group Clean Energy Associates (CEA) said there is “no direct market impact” from the decision. However, the threat of AD/CVD is causing prices to increase, contracts to be re-negotiated, and is delaying procurement decisions, said CEA. It said project timelines are being pushed back as a result, particularly for projects planned for construction in 2025.

Domestic content bonus guidance

On May 16, the U.S. Treasury updated guidance on access the domestic content bonus under the Section 48/48E Investment Tax Credit and Section 45/45Y Production Tax Credit, tax credits made available via the Inflation Reduction Act. The bonus is a 10% adder to the base 30% tax credit for clean energy projects.

IRS requires that structural construction components like steel and rebar foundation posts for solar projects are 100% U.S. manufactured. The rest of the materials, listed as “manufactured products,” must include domestic content for 40% of the cost, increasing to 55% over time. 

Developers must collect three “direct costs” from equipment providers to calculate the manufactured product portion. The direct costs are the wages paid to factory workers, payroll taxes on those wages and the amount paid to component suppliers for parts supplied directly to the factory.

Clean energy developers now have the option to rely on Department of Energy provided data on default cost percentages for an exhaustive list of manufactured products and their components. This safe harbor data can be used in lieu of obtaining direct cost information from suppliers. The updates are expected to make the bonus easier for project developers to access. 

“However, even for those solar projects utilizing trackers with a high portion of domestic content, most projects will still need a domestic cell or a First Solar module to qualify, and these are in limited supply,” said CEA. “Therefore, while CEA expects more projects to now qualify for the Domestic Content Bonus (particularly in 2026 and thereafter), the number of projects will still be limited.”

Bifacial exemption removed

Also on May 16, the Biden Administration reinstated tariffs on bifacial solar modules, which generate electricity on both sides of the panel. Bifacial solar modules were previously exempt from tariffs, and the removal of the exemption reinstates a 15% tariff.

The reinstatement of this tariff is expected to increase the cost of commercial, industrial and utility-scale solar projects by 1% to 2%.

With the removal of this exemption, the cost of imported bifacial solar panels, typically ranging from $0.10 to 0.25 per watt, will increase by $0.015 to $0.0375 per watt. For commercial projects with installation costs between $1.50 and $2.75 per watt, these increases will result in system price hikes of about 1-2%. Bifacial panels now represent 98% of all solar panels imported into these sectors.

The Administration also maintained a tariff-rate quota, a volume of solar cells that can be imported without paying the 201 tariff. This will be set at 5 GW, though Biden said if the total volume of cell imports reaches 5 GW in a year, he has the power to raise the tariff-exempt cells by 7.5 GW to a total of 12.5 GW.

CEA said the removal of the bifacial exemption is expected to have a limited impact on module prices, as around half the tariff cost is expected to be absorbed by suppliers. However, combined with AD/CVD duties, 201 tariffs could “significantly disadvantage products from Southeast Asia in the U.S. market,” said CEA.

Section 301 tariffs raised

On May 14, the Biden Administration announced changes to Section 301 tariffs on imports of electric vehicles, solar, battery energy storage, and related components.

Tariffs on solar cells and modules shipped from China were raised from 25% to 50%. A range of exemptions were provided for solar cell and module manufacturing equipment, which were previously exposed to 25% tariffs.

Clean Energy Associates said the tariffs on Chinese solar cells and modules “are largely performative” as the U.S. only imports about 1% of its solar cells and modules directly from China.

“The removal of tariffs on solar manufacturing equipment will reduce capital expenditure costs for U.S. cell and module factories, making it easier to set up these factories and making U.S. cell and module production marginally less expensive and more competitive with imports,” said CEA.

In a follow-up report, pv magazine USA will review recent policy change effects on the energy storage market.

The United States is making efforts to onshore its solar component manufacturing supply chain, securing domestic jobs, stimulating local economies, and supporting national security interests.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 sets forth both demand and supply-side incentives to encourage solar manufacturing within the U.S., both in the form of production tax credits for manufacturers and investment tax credits for project developers using domestic content. While these incentives have driven a rush of investments on U.S. lands in from major global solar component providers, much of the investment has been focused on the final legs of the solar supply chain.

A large amount of solar mounting solutions, racking, and trackers, as well as finished solar panels, known as modules, are made in the U.S., with new factory openings announced quite frequently in the two years since IRA has been passed. However, for the U.S. to have a functionally independent solar supply chain, the earlier legs of the solar supply chain must be addressed. 

A typical solar panel’s journey begins with mining and refinement of raw polysilicon into ingots. The ingots are shaved into wafers, and then manufactured into cells. These cells are then combined and framed into a solar panel, more commonly known in the industry as a solar module. The U.S. has high amounts of module assembly capacity, but each leg before module assembly in the supply chain is critically undersupplied domestically.

As seen in the chart below, China dominates the global supply chain in these early legs of solar manufacturing.

“These manufacturing steps are the most capital intensive yet among the least incentivized through the provisions in the IRA,” said the Solar Energy Manufacturing for America coalition. 

Recent updates to the IRA’s rules on the domestic content tax credit adder may help push more solar cell manufacturing on U.S. shores. Solar projects meeting the domestic content requirements for IRA are awarded a 10% tax credit for installed project costs on top of the 30% base investment tax credit. Under the updated rules, it appears in most scenarios, a solar module must have solar cells of U.S. origin to qualify for the adder. 

Despite this tailwind for solar cell development efforts in the U.S., it remains to be seen if the United States can compete with China on cost. Solar component prices are hovering at all-time lows, and the U.S. lacks the raw material mining and refinement ecosystem that China has established to support the early legs of the supply chain. 

The Biden Administration has also cracked down on the supply side from China. Recent measures have intensified tariffs for solar components entering U.S. shores, and the two-year pause on antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) tariffs is set to end this June.  

Tariffs on goods found not to be in compliance with AD/CVD laws can be as high as 50% to 250% or more of the cost of shipped goods. This is a considerable deterrent for dumping product, and yet solar component prices continue to race to the bottom. The heavy lift of building the early-stage upstream manufacturing ecosystem of polysilicon, ingots, wafers, and cells remains heavy. 

R&D funding

Along with these measures, the Biden Administration announced through the Department of Energy $71 million in funding for research and development projects that seek to address these early gaps in the solar supply chain. DOE selected three projects for the Silicon Solar Manufacturing and Dual-Use Photovoltaics Incubator funding program which will support the development of technologies to bring silicon wafer and cell manufacturing onshore. 

Seven additional projects will advance dual-use PV technologies to harness their potential to electrify buildings, decarbonize the transportation sector, and reduce land-use conflicts. Funded companies include Silfab Solar, Ubiquity Solar, GAF Energy, and more. Find the full list of awardees here.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to building an American-made solar supply chain that boosts innovation, drives down costs for families, and delivers jobs across the nation,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.

While thousands of jobs and billions of investments in the have occurred post-IRA, it remains uncertain that the U.S. will be able to build a domestic clean energy supply chain from the ground up.

U.S. government doubles tariff rates on PV cell imports from China to 50% The administration of President Joe Biden raised tariff rates on PV cell imports from China from 25% to 50%. It also increased the tariff rates for semiconductors, electric vehicles, and EV batteries from China, among other goods.

PV players wrestle tariff threat and oversupply  The requirements of measures such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) mean that solar panel prices in the United States can be twice as much as in Europe. 

Midea unveils outdoor residential heat pump Midea says its new outdoor residential Evox G3 Heat Pump ranges in size from 1.5 tons to 5 tons, with a coefficient of performance of 1.8. It features enhanced vapor injection technology and uses A2L as the refrigerant.

People on the move: Schneider Electric, Lightsource bp, GoodFinch and more Job moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and energy transition finance.

Catalyze secures $100 million to support 79 MW New York solar portfolio The funding comes from NY Green Bank, which is requiring that a significant percentage of solar project subscribers benefit disadvantaged communities.

China-based heating specialist Midea has developed a new outdoor, central ducted heat pump for residential applications.

“This latest generation of the Evox series, featuring the Evox G³ Heat Pump and Evox G³ Air Handling Unit (AHU), represents the future of electric, inverter-driven heat pump technology as the solution for home heating and cooling upgrades, designed to deliver unparalleled heating/cooling comfort, performance and ease of installation across North America,” the manufacturer said in statement.

It claimed that the new product is suitable for all climates and is designed “to defy harsh winter temperatures.”

The Evox G³ Heat Pump has a size of 1.5 tons to 5 tons and a coefficient of performance of 1.8. It is 36 cm to 53 cm wide, which the company said ensures easy deployment in challenging spaces such as attics and basements. It can reportedly provide up to 100% heating output down to -13 F (-25 C) and operate “effectively” down to -22 F (-30 C).

The heat pump also features an enhanced vapor injection (EVI) technology and a multi-layer heat exchanger. These components enable it to operate with auxiliary sources of heat and achieve high comfort levels also in extremely cold weather conditions.

“Evox G³ also has you covered in the summer, with a cooling efficiency of up to 19 SEER2 that can provide energy savings of up to 32.5% compared to the conventional 14.3 SEER systems currently popular on the market,” said the company.

The EVI technology combines a two-stage refrigerant compression process with an intermediary injection of additional refrigerant vapor, which reportedly increases overall performance and coefficient of performance.

“The injection of vapor refrigerant facilitates higher output temperatures while simultaneously expanding the operational range of the heat pump, thereby ensuring outstanding functionality even in sub-zero conditions,” said Midea. “Its multi-position installation configuration means contractors can stock one stock keeping unit and install it in six configurations.”

From pv magazine Global

The U.S. government decided to raise the tariff rates it applies to solar cells imported from China from 25% to 50%.

“The tariff increase will protect against China’s policy-driven overcapacity that depresses prices and inhibits the development of solar capacity outside of China,” the White House said in a statement. “China has used unfair practices to dominate upwards of 80 to 90% of certain parts of the global solar supply chain, and is trying to maintain that status quo. Chinese policies and non-market practices are flooding global markets with artificially cheap solar modules and panels, undermining investment in solar manufacturing outside of China.”

The Biden administration has also decided to raise tariff rates on aluminum and steel imported from China, from 0% to 7.5% up to 25%, as well as those applied to semiconductors, from 25% to 50%.

In addition, it has decided to raise tariffs imposed on electric vehicles from 25% to 100% and those on lithium-ion EV batteries from 7.5%% to 25%. The government has also increased the tariffs on ship-to-shore cranes and medical products.

“American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices,” the US government said. “China’s forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft have contributed to its control of 70%, 80%, and even 90% of global production for the critical inputs necessary for our technologies, infrastructure, energy, and health care – creating unacceptable risks to America’s supply chains and economic security.”

The energy transition from fossil fuels to non-emitting sources, such as renewables and nuclear power is only in its early stages and the effects on policy and energy infrastructure are already massive.

One aspect of the transition has become clear: Retreating from baseline generation in favor of intermittent sources such as solar and wind generation is going to require tremendous increases in long-term energy storage capacity beyond traditional physical means, such as pumped hydro and flywheels. For renewable energy sources, the killer app is battery storage. This is true on a worldwide basis.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a global organization that monitors energy policy and technology developments for governments and industry, has released a report saying batteries are absolutely essential to the energy transition and represent the fastest growing energy technology in 2003, when the latest data were compiled.

More specifically, battery storage for the power sector was the top growth area, with deployment more than doubling from 2022. The report said this growth was strong across generation categories: utility-scale battery projects, behind-the-meter storage, mini-grids and residential solar systems. Together, these applications added 42 GW of battery storage capacity globally, the report said.

While consumer demand and other applications remain strong, the IEA said 90% of annual lithium-ion battery demand in 2023 came from the energy sector. This is up from 50% 2016, when the total lithium-ion battery market was 10-times smaller. The report said that despite demand, performance and supply chains for lithium-ion batteries have increased to keep pace with requirements.

According to the IEA, expansion in EV sales have not diminished the availability of lithium-ion batteries for other sectors. Lithium-ion chemistries represent nearly all batteries in EVs, the report said.

The one fly in the ointment is that while the demand for battery storage for energy and EVs is essentially global among developed countries, the supply of dominant lithium-ion batteries is very concentrated.

The report says:

While the global battery supply chain is complex, every step in it – from the extraction of mineral ores to the use of high-grade chemicals for the manufacture of battery components in the final battery pack – has a high degree of geographic concentration. Battery manufacturers are dependent on a small number of countries for the raw material supply and extraction of many critical minerals. China undertakes well over half of global raw material processing for lithium and cobalt and has almost 85% of global battery cell production capacity. Europe, the United States and Korea each hold 10% or less of the supply chain for some battery metals and cells today.

Image: CC BY 4.0. 

A petition was filed to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission, as a coalition of solar manufacturers with operations in the U.S. allege that four Southeast Asian nations are exporting dumped goods from China, making it difficult for domestic manufacturers to compete on cost.

The coalition, signed as the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, includes First Solar, Qcells, Meyer Burger, REC Silicon, and others. The companies said the current “manufacturing renaissance” in the United States is under threat from heavily subsidized Chinese cells and modules that are alleged to be in infraction with antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) law.

“Conditions are untenable for American solar manufacturers,” said Mike Carr, executive director of Solar Energy Manufacturers for America (SEMA) coalition. “SEMA will continue to fight for strong trade enforcement and onshoring our supply chain so American companies can thrive and we can usher in a new era of clean energy independence.”

Commerce has 20 days to act on the petition and initiate an investigation if deemed necessary. If the International Trade Commission then finds a preliminary finding of material injury, this would be issued within 45 days of the investigation, and a final determination would not be issued until spring 2025. President Biden issued a 2-year pause on solar AD/CVD tariffs in 2022, which is set to end in June 2024.

AD/CVD laws assess steep tariffs on solar cells and modules that are found to be in violation of dumping product in other countries to avoid tariffs. In previous solar AD/CVD cases, goods found in violation have been assessed tariffs with costs as high as 50% to 250% of the cost the shipped products.

The new petition calls for investigation of goods shipped from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia. Roth Capital Partners previously warned that India may also be included in the petition, but it was ultimately not included in the list of named countries.

The coalition of U.S. manufacturers said “China’s unfair and illegal trade practices have inundated the market with dumped solar panels, undercutting the U.S. ability to compete.” Solar module prices have fallen to a record low, falling more than 50% over the last year. The coalition said if U.S. developers sourced 55% of their manufactured solar goods domestically, the solar manufacturing industry would support 900,000 U.S. jobs by 2035. Furthermore, onshoring the solar supply chain could cut global solar manufacturing emissions by 30%, said the coalition.

If Commerce takes up the investigation, it is expected to be a positive development for manufacturers like First Solar, while being a negative development for global suppliers like JinkoSolar and Canadian Solar. Roth Capital Partners said the investigation would also mark an “incremental negative” for the U.S. utility-scale industry broadly, including for tracker manufacturers like Nextracker and Array Technologies. Array Technologies called for the petition to be rejected.

“The Inflation Reduction Act has super-charged the expansion of the American solar supply chain, which is more than just modules—it’s trackers, inverters, balance of electrical systems and polysilicon manufacturers,” said Kevin G. Hostelter, chief executive officer, Array Technologies. “We need to keep growing solar deployment to create jobs and bolster our energy independence. More duties will only cause uncertainty and unnecessary project delays, holding the U.S. back in meeting our clean energy deployment and manufacturing goals.”

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), Advanced Energy United, American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), and American Clean Power Association (ACP) issued a joint statement in opposition to the petition.

“We are deeply concerned the AD/CVD petitions will lead to further market volatility across the U.S. solar and storage industry and create uncertainty at a time when we need effective solutions that support U.S. solar manufacturers,” said the joint statement. “We need constructive actions, like the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit and other policies, to expand domestic solar manufacturing and deploy clean energy at scale and speed to serve growing electricity demand.”

From pv magazine Global

Battery industry heavyweight CATL has unveiled its latest innovation in energy storage system design with enhanced energy density and efficiency, as well as zero degradation for both power and capacity.

Its new TENER product achieves 6.25 MW capacity in a 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container, increasing the energy density per unit area by 30% and reducing the overall station footprint by 20% compared to its previous 5 MWh containerized energy storage system. For example, a 200 MWh TENER power station would cover an area of 4,465 square meters.

According to CATL, TENER cells achieve an energy density of 430 Wh/L, which it says is “an impressive milestone for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries used in energy storage.”

CATL describes TENER as the world’s first mass-producible energy storage system with zero degradation in the first five years of use. Leveraging biomimetic solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) and self-assembled electrolyte technologies, it says that TENER enables unobstructed movement of lithium ions and achieves zero degradation for both power and capacity.

This represents a significant advancement in increasing the lifespan of batteries and creates the much coveted “ageless” energy storage system, at least in the first years of the system’s operation.

On the safety front, CATL has also introduced a few improvements.

“Powered by cutting-edge technologies and extreme manufacturing capabilities, CATL has resolved the challenges caused by highly active lithium metals in zero-degradation batteries, which effectively helps prevent thermal runaway caused by oxidation reaction,” it said.

It has also established a dedicated, end-to-end quality management system that includes technology development, proof testing, operation monitoring, and safety failure analysis. It sets different safety goals as required by different scenarios, and then develops the corresponding safety technology to meet those goals. In addition, it has built a validation platform to simulate the safety test of energy storage systems in different power grid scenarios.

After a project is put into operation, CATL continues to monitor its operational status through AI-powered risk monitoring and an intelligent early warning system. It calculates the failure rate of energy storage products throughout their life cycle, and thus verifies the safety design goals while continuing to optimize them.

The manufacturer says it has reduced the failure rate to the PPB (single defect rate per billion) level for cells used in TENER, which, when extended to the operation throughout its full lifecycle, can lower operating costs and significantly enhance the internal rate of return. CATL also says that TENER is equipped with long service life, without specifying the warranty specs.

The Chinese battery maker has ranked first in market share of global energy storage battery shipments for three straight years, with a global market share of 40% in 2023. In its latest annual report, it said that its sales of energy storage battery systems hit 69 GWh in in 2023, representing a year-on-year increase of 46.81%.

An industry note from Philip Shen, managing director, Roth Capital Partners, warned that the United States may soon face another ongoing tariff enforcement saga.

The note said that based on new regulations from the Department of Commerce, new antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) cases could be filed as soon as April 25.

AD/CVD laws assess tariffs on goods that are found to be dodging import duties by dumping products in other countries before shipping them to the U.S. In the previous AD/CVD proceeding, four Southeastern Asian countries, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia, which were responsible for roughly 80% of the U.S. supply of solar components, were alleged as potentially harboring dumped products from China.

Resulting tariffs of components found in violation ranged as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. The looming threat of tariffs led to high levels of risk and uncertainty in the market, and about 20% of utility-scale solar capacity was delayed or cancelled in the first half of 2022 due to this risk. In June 2022, President Biden placed a two year pause on new solar AD/CVD tariffs, which is set to expire this summer.

Roth said it remains “difficult to gauge” how high the tariffs could be in the new case later this month.

An industry contact told Roth that the petitions for AD/CVD cases will likely occur as soon as possible after the April 25 date, because petitioners “want AD/CVD preliminary decisions to be coming out during the heat of election season.”

Roth also noted that it is possible India will join the four Southeastern Asian nations in this round of AD/CVD investigation.

An international team of researchers announced an important achievement on the path to commercializing perovskite solar cells. Perovskite, a semiconducting material, is the focus of research around the globe due to its potential to convert more solar power to electricity than the commonly used silicon, and at lower cost.

There are drawbacks, however, in the production of perovskite solar. One of them is that the coating process must take place inside a chamber filled with non-reactive gas because otherwise the perovskites react with oxygen, thus decreasing performance.

A new paper published in the journal Nature Energy describes the work conducted by Jixian Xu and his team at the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China. The team found that adding dimethylammonium formate (DMAFo) to the perovskite solution before coating could prevent the materials from oxidizing. This discovery enables coating to take in ambient air instead of having to be inside a box.

Michael McGehee, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and fellow with Colorado University Boulder’s Renewable & Sustainable Energy Institute, interpreted the results and helped with writing the paper. He told pv magazine USA that this was the first time DMAFo had been used in perovskite research and said it’s helpful because it is a reducing agent that prevents iodide from oxidizing. As he described it, the DMAFo was added into the perovskite precursor solution. “It protects the iodide in that solution, making it possible to make the cells in air and greatly extending the shelf life of the precursor solution,” McGehee said.

McGehee acknowledged that coating inside a box is acceptable during the research phase, “but when you start coating large pieces of glass, it gets harder and harder to do this in a nitrogen filled box,” he said.

The results show that DMAFo perovskite cells can achieve an efficiency of nearly 25% on their own, comparable to the current efficiency record for perovskite cells of 26%.

The additive also improved the cells’ stability, which McGehee noted is important for the transition to clean energy.

An issue with perovskite solar compared to silicon is that they can degrade much faster. The study showed that the perovskite cell made with DMAFo retained 90% of its efficiency after being exposed to LED light that mimicked sunlight for 700 hours. In contrast, cells made in the air without DMAFo degraded quickly after only 300 hours.

McGehee noted that longer tests are needed because there are 8,000 hours in one year. “It’s too early to say that they are as stable as silicon panels, but we’re on a good trajectory toward that,” he said.

The next step for the team is to develop tandem cells with a real-world efficiency of over 30% that are as equally stable as silicon panels over a 25-year period.

After a decade of research in perovskites, engineers have built perovskite cells that are as efficient as silicon cells, which were invented 70 years ago, McGehee said. “We are taking perovskites to the finish line.  If tandems work out well, they certainly have the potential to dominate the market and become the next generation of solar cells,” he said.

The Chinese Module Marker (CMM), the OPIS benchmark assessment for TOPCon modules was assessed at $0.121 per W, unchanged week to week while mono PERC modules from China were assessed at $0.112/W, stable from the previous week amid unchanged market fundamentals.

The past few weeks of price hikes in the Chinese market saw a slight respite this week with many market participants pointing out that market activity had quietened down and prices were starting to stabilize in the domestic market.

Overseas demand continued to remain firm as March and April are the start of a strong quarter for solar deployments across Europe, with many companies installing the backlog of contracts they had accumulated over the winter, a market source said.

Turkey has implemented anti-dumping measures on solar panel imports from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Croatia, and Jordan where a guarantee fee of $25 per square meter will be levied on photovoltaic (PV) cells that are assembled in modules or arranged in panels originating from these countries.

According to OPIS sources, these measures would not have a big impact on Southeast Asia modules as the majority of Southeast Asia modules are destined for the U.S. market. The current U.S. Section 201 tariff exemption of bifacial modules from Southeast Asia that is set to expire in June was expected to have a greater impact.

Freight rates from Southeast Asia to the United States remained at $0.02-0.03 with some players locking in their freights at lower rates, a market participant said. About 30 GW of module inventory that was imported last year to the United States was distorting prices in the market as sellers dropped prices of these old stock in a bid to clear inventory, the market source added. According to the source, prices of mono PERC in the warehouses are sold at $0.17/W, down from $0.19/W previously in December.

New domestic U.S. module capacity is expected to come on stream in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2025 and demand for US-made modules is expected to remain high which will support firmer prices of these products, the source added.

OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.

From pv magazine Global

Thornova Solar, the US unit of Chinese PV manufacturer Sunova Solar, has launched a new bifacial TOPCon PV module for applications in large scale solar projects.

The TS-BWT66-G12 dual-glass module has a size of 2,384 mm x 1,303 mm x 35 mm and weighs 38.5 kg. It features a power conversion efficiency spanning from 22.4% to 23.2% and a temperature coefficient of -0.29% per C.

Its power output ranges from 695 W to 720. The open-circuit voltage is between 47.23 V and 47.98 V and the short-circuit current is of 18.68 A to 18.79 A. It can operate with a system voltage of 1,500 V and temperatures ranging from -40 C to 85 C.

The new product also features a transparent white mesh backsheet, 2.0 mm heat-strengthened glass, and an anti-reflective coating. It comes with a 15-year product warranty and a 30-year performance warranty.

“Annual linear degradation over 30 years is 0.4%, with a maximum degradation in the first year of 1.0%,” the manufacturer said in a statement.

Thornova Solar is planning to build a solar cell and module factory at an unspecified location in the United States in 2025.

“We plan to produce both cells and modules in the United States in 2025, enabling buyers to take full advantage of US tax credits for solar modules with domestic content,” Thornova CEO, William Sheng, said. “With the rapid growth in solar power generation in the U.S., we aim to provide a strong, reliable U.S.-based supply of modules that are optimally designed for utility-scale projects.”

Sunova Solar currently operates three manufacturing factories in China and Vietnam. The company said that as of December 2023, it had shipped more than 4 GW of cumulative modules throughout the world.

The Global Polysilicon Marker (GPM), the OPIS benchmark for polysilicon outside China, remained steady at $23.813/kg this week, unchanged from the previous week, reflecting stable market fundamentals

A source familiar with the global polysilicon market told OPIS that prices are poised to fluctuate within a fair range, as the dynamics of supply and demand in the polysilicon market outside of China are not anticipated to undergo significant changes in the short term.

In parallel, it was reported last week that construction has commenced on a solar-grade polysilicon facility in Oman, boasting an annual output of 100,000 MT. According to a source with knowledge of this project, construction is expected to finalize by the third quarter of next year, with trial production slated to commence in the fourth quarter. If all proceeds as planned, the factory could potentially generate a polysilicon output ranging between 10,000 to 20,000 MT by the end of 2025.

According to a polysilicon market source based in China, the primary advantage of the Oman project, as a polysilicon plant outside of China, stems from its cost-effectiveness strategy. The production equipment was sourced from China and China National Chemical Engineering Sixth Construction was engaged as the project contractor. The latter has worked on numerous polysilicon projects by major Chinese companies. Furthermore, the industrial park housing the Oman polysilicon project accommodates an additional metal silicon project with an annual production capacity of 50,000 MT, further contributing to cost reduction of the polysilicon project, the source added.

A market observer highlighted that if the cells and modules manufactured using the low-cost polysilicon from the Oman factory in the future are deemed compliant with the regulation mandating supply chain traceability for products imported into the US, it could potentially exert pressure on prices across the global polysilicon market.

China Mono Grade, OPIS’ assessment for polysilicon prices in the country were assessed at CNY60.33 ($8.34)/kg this week, down CNY0.92/kg, or 1.50% from the previous week, reflecting buy-sell indications heard.

Numerous sources attribute the recent decline in polysilicon prices primarily to the influx of low-priced offers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 polysilicon factories, resulting in an overall market price decrease. These manufacturers are motivated by two factors: the need to clear existing inventory and the desire to prevent further stockpiling, driving them to actively sell their products at prices ranging between CNY55/kg and CNY58/kg.

Contrarily, prices from Tier-1 polysilicon companies remain relatively stable. This stability stems from their capability to produce premium P-type polysilicon, which is well-suited for n-type downstream products.

As noted by a market observer, there is currently an excess of 100,000 mt of polysilicon inventory in the market, roughly equivalent to more than two weeks’ worth of production. The bulk of this inventory consists of polysilicon unsuitable for n-type downstream products.

The source added that to address these inventories, some polysilicon producers have implemented a bundled sales strategy. This entails requiring customers interested in purchasing n-type polysilicon to also acquire P-type polysilicon simultaneously. To incentivize this, polysilicon producers offer a certain discount on the overall price of the bundled purchase.

According to a downstream source, the prevalent high inventory of wafers, along with deliberations by some wafer factories to scale back production, suggests a looming possibility of a short-term decline in polysilicon prices, owing to the anticipated weakening demand.

OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.

From pv magazine Global

Longi has revealed it might reduce its global workforce due to an “increasingly competitive environment” in the solar industry.

“In order to adapt to market changes and improve organizational efficiency, Longi is optimizing its workforce,” a company spokesperson told pv magazine. “The expected job reduction rate is about 5% of total employees, and the information circulating online about our company’s ‘30% layoff’ plan is false.”

The statement refers to an article published by Bloomberg on Monday, citing “people familiar with the matter” as a source. The outlet reported that Longi was planning to cut around one-third of its staff to reduce costs and regain competitiveness in an industry plagued by overcapacity.

This is not the first time layoff rumors have emerged in relation to Longi. In December 2023, reports surfaced suggesting a significant reduction in expatriate laborers and management trainees, alongside a halt in social recruitment activities.

According to the company’s latest annual report, it employed 60,601 people at the end of 2022. It was expected to have grown to around 80,000 employees by mid-2023.

From pv magazine Global

China’s JinkoSolar was the world’s largest PV module supplier in 2023, with 78.5 GW of global shipments.

In its financial results for 2023, the company said that its panel shipments increased by 76.4% year on year.

“At the end of the fourth quarter, we became the first module manufacturer in the world to have delivered a total of 210 GW solar modules, covering over 190 countries and regions,” it said, in reference to its cumulative shipments.

JinkoSolar recorded a turnover of CNY 118.68 billion ($16.72 billion), up 42.8% from 2022. It also posted a net profit of CNY 3.45 billion.

“Benefiting from our efforts in cost optimization, our profitability for the full year significantly improved year-over-year, with gross margin at 16.0%, compared to 14.8% in 2022,” said Jinko CEO Xiande Li. “Module shipment in the fourth quarter was 26.3 GW, exceeding our guidance.”

Li said that around half of the modules shipped in the fourth quarter went to the Chinese market, where they were sold at lower prices.

In its outlook for 2024, JinkoSolar said it hopes to ship between 100 GW and 110 GW.

“We expect our annual production capacity for mono wafers, solar cells and solar modules to reach 120 GW, 110 GW and 130 GW, respectively, by the end of 2024, with N-type capacity accounting for over 90% of total capacity,” it stated. “By then, we believe mass-produced N-type cell efficiency will have reached 26.5%.”

From pv magazine Global

Sinovoltaics, a Hong Kong-based technical compliance and quality assurance service firm, has begun to publish supply chain reports about PV manufacturing in North American and European markets. In the pipeline is coverage of India and Southeast Asia.

Published in the form of infographics and data tables, the supply chain reports are free.

“We have been observing supply chain trends and movements for years and years, for example also witnessing the gradual growth of manufacturing in Southeast Asia, which is why we have nowadays quality engineering teams on-site at the factories in that region,” Sinovoltaics CTO Niclas Weimar told pv magazine. “This new type of report is basically putting our observations into report form, starting from this year onwards, helping to visualize the distribution of manufacturing capacities across different jurisdictions.”

The analysts expects the information to be used by solar developers and other buyers to locate manufacturers in relevant regions, assess the scalability of the supply chain for larger projects, or to source modules for projects more efficiently with an eye on reducing transportation costs and carbon emissions.

“The solar industry needs the most up-to-date module purchasing information,” said Dricus de Rooij, co-founder and CEO of Sinovoltaics in a statement. “Every four months, solar developers will have critical and dynamic data that will enable them to stay informed about emerging PV suppliers and the latest developments in global solar manufacturing.”

The supply chain reports cover current and planned manufacturing activity from 2023 to 2027 for producers of modules, cells, wafers, ingots, polysilicon, and multigrain silicon. It notes capacity at each of a manufacturers’ factory locations. There are also symbols indicating if a company is now bankrupt, or a manufacturing site is closed or on hold.

The first edition of North American report covers 81 sites in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, while the European version lists 91 sites across the region, including companies located in Kazakhstan and Turkey.

From pv magazine Global

Researchers from China and the United States have proposed a novel modular floating PV (FPV) solution to assess the behavior of offshore, multi-connected modules under combined wave-wind conditions. The team ─ which included scientists from Dalian University of Technology and the University of Maine ─ analyzed various types of fixed and hinged FPV systems to determine potential approaches to optimization.

“FPV is a complex multi-body system under the coupling action of wind, wave, current, and other multi-physical fields,” the study noted. “It is therefore of immense importance to develop robust engineering methodologies and models to design FPV systems applied to offshore environments.”

The analysis found that as the number of modules increases, motion responses become more pronounced, and the 2 x 2 platform experienced the most significant pitch response of the configurations studied. The team also observed that the additional movement generated by hinged connections resulted in “non-negligible” dynamic response for multi-body FPV systems, while systems using fixed connections showed no significant dynamic response. In addition, researchers observed that the mooring tension of systems with hinged connections was greater than that of systems with fixed connections.

For this study, the group introduced a novel modular design for FPV platforms that incorporated the concept of semi-submersible ocean engineering platforms. It used a catenary mooring system, which is based on a curve that has been commonly used in bridge, ship, and ocean platform moorings. An offshore site in China’s Shandong province was selected for the study, which used frequency-domain analysis and evaluated the overall hydrodynamic performance and behavioral characteristics of multiple types of FPV platforms.

The researchers created the FPV platforms using cylindrical pontoons and heave plates. They mounted solar panels with an inclination of 10 degrees onto steel trusses above the pontoons, with each steel truss providing at least 250 kW of power generation per platform. Motion responses under extreme conditions were examined for moored single, 2 x 2, and 3 x 3 FPV systems.

“The stability of FPV platforms is crucial in preventing the loss of power facilities caused by overturning and minimizes the damage to power transmission cables,” they said. “As a result, mooring design is critical to mitigate the dynamic response of FPV systems.”

The study emphasizes that heave response is influenced by the ratio of mass to stiffness. Researchers observed that the maximum pitch response for the 2 x 2 FPV systems is “obtained when the wave trough is just at the connection position of the two modules and the modules are V-shaped.” However, adding a third row of modules helped to reduce the relative movements, so that “the maximum pitch motion of the 3 x 3 platform” was less than the maximum of the 2 x 2 platform.

Based on their analysis, the team recommends an installation angle of at least 15 degrees for a multi-body FPV system, to reduce both motion and structural responses.

The group’s findings are available in the study “Assessing the dynamic behavior of multiconnected offshore floating photovoltaic systems under combined wave-wind loads: A comprehensive numerical analysis,” published in Sustainable Horizons.

“Optimization of mooring systems could be conducted to further enhance the performance and reduce platform motion responses, such optimizations can lead to potential cost savings, making the overall system more economically viable,” they concluded.

Although PV produces electricity from sunlight with no emissions, it is not “free.” It requires energy, resources, transportation, and installation, all of which are processes currently require carbon emissions.

In pursuit of reduced emissions, one of the major drivers of solar adoption, along with reduced costs, component procurers and project developers must consider the carbon required to bring a project to fruition. Sometimes referred to as the “carbon backpack,” the embodied carbon in a component can differ greatly based on materials used and where it was produced.

According to the Ultra Low-Carbon Solar Alliance, the use of PV materials with a lower carbon backpack can reduce the carbon footprint by 50% in the U.S. and 70% in Europe.

Origami Solar, a designer and manufacturer of recycled steel frames for solar modules, commissioned an independent study with Boundless Impact Research & Analytics to understand the difference in carbon backpack between its product and leading competitors. The analysis considered raw material production, manufacturing, transportation, and more.

It found that compared with traditional virgin material aluminum module frames shipped from China, U.S.-made module frames made from recycled steel show a 90.4% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In Germany, the frames have a 94.7% carbon advantage.

Boundless estimates the greenhouse gas footprint of Origami Solar’s steel module frames at 9.25 kilograms (kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent per 2 meter by 1 meter frame produced in the U.S.

“The estimated Fossil Energy Footprint of Origami Solar’s steel module frame is 71.8 megajoules (MJ) in the United States and 62.2 MJ in Germany per 2 by 1-meter frame, compared to 920 MJ for a conventional virgin aluminum frame produced in China using an extrusion production process,” said the report.

The company said the improved carbon embodiment would result in a reduction of 80 kg of emissions per module or 200 metric tons per MW.

Analysis by Bloomberg NEF found that though solar component costs have lowered, aluminum framing has stayed relatively flat, and now represent about 25% of the cost of a module. 

Find the full comparative analysis and learn more about Origami’s process here.

Origami Solar, a small company based in Bend, Oregon, was awarded the grand prize in the 2022 U.S. Department of Energy’s American-Made Solar Prize competition, recognizing the disruptive value and market potential of the company’s steel module frame.

The company said it is sourcing steel and plans on producing frames regionally, thus eliminating supply chain constraints and trucking miles. The company reports that the frames are 100% U.S. made and will enable solar modules to qualify for the domestic content bonus tax credit.

“Steel is an earth-abundant resource that can be manufactured on every continent, the use of which in trackers, racking, mounts, and tubes is already widely accepted by the solar industry,” said Mathew Arnold, chief executive officer of Unimacts, a Boston-based manufacturer with production facilities in Nevada, Mexico and Spain. “We are excited to collaborate with Origami Solar to rapidly facilitate the shift from imported aluminum to domestically made steel frames.”

The sky is not falling in the lithium sector, but what is moving markets is misinformation and misinterpretation of sales trends. Lithium carbonite is a vital critical element for electric vehicles. So when Ford and General Motors reported demand for their EV’s fell short of projections in late October 2023, pandemonium broke out with bearish news reports on the future of EV’s and its underlying key critical elements including lithium and cobalt.

With the U.S. in an election year, is it any surprise that the energy metal conversation got hijacked by political strategists looking to rain on President Biden’s green energy parade? The move to accelerated decarbonization is not a partisan issue; it is about the survival of our planet.

Every new major innovation experience hiccups on the way to mainstream adoption, but the EV market has had stratospheric growth.

Electric cars’ fast lane trajectory

All-electric car sales in the United States continue to increase at a strong clip, outpacing the general car market. “A record 1.2 million U.S. vehicle buyers chose to go electric last year, according to estimates from Kelley Blue Book with 1,189,051 new electric vehicles (EVs) put into service. Experian/Automotive News registration data reports that the total number of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) registrations during the first eight months of 2023 were 754,811, 64% higher than a year ago, and about 7.3% of the total market, up from 5% at that time in 2022.

With the U.S. government planning to end purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, downstream end users will soon be entirely dependent on the guaranteed long-term availability of steady supplies of lithium carbonate (battery-grade lithium).

Why low prices cure low prices

Today’s low lithium prices disrupt the applecart of mining and exploration. A thinning of the (lithium) herds may be on the horizon this year with the ‘perfect storm’ of low lithium carbonite prices and limited access to new capital. Marginal prospectors and junior miners will exit stage left as even major producers curtail projects.

The ‘lithium mania’ chapter officially came to an abrupt close on January 17th when the world’s largest producer, Albemarle Corp., announced a reduction in project spending. With the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate descending in the last 12 months, widely attributed to oversupplied markets in Asia, the ‘mania’ subsided and ‘depression’ arrived. Prospectors and juniors drawn to lithium, akin to the dot.com euphoria in the ‘90s, pulled back in record numbers delaying or suspending projects.

So, where does that leave us with availability to lithium, sourced from geopolitically friendly regions? Will our brine, hard rock, and claystone ‘rockstars’ have access to the capital needed to bring projects to fruition in geopolitically friendly regions of the world?

Foundation of our environmental future

Our world will transition from fossil fuels and the demand for lithium will increase in the coming decade. Canada is paying $30 billion in incentives to build three battery plants which require battery-related energy metals including lithium. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $6 billion in incentives to support R&D and production of batteries in the US, as well as supporting the creation of a domestic supply chain. America’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocates $10 billion to support construction of clean energy tech factories and retrofitting existing factories to make clean energy equipment and components including R&D support, US battery production and the creation of a domestic supply chain.

Divestment from China Crucial to Western Nations’ Environmentally & Fiscally Sound Future The US recognized 50 minerals, including lithium, as critical to the nation’s future and security. Since 2020, many Western nations’ divestment from China, a Goliath in energy metals mining and processing which controls nearly 60% of the world’s capacity for processing raw lithium products into battery-grade chemicals, has resulted in China scouting the world for mining assets in regions that do not have geopolitical conflicts with the world’s second most populous country.

Lithium subject to vagaries of spot market pricing

Much of the volatility around lithium prices is because most lithium products are traded using long-term contracts with wildly varying differentials between prices achieved for lithium carbonate from a specific mining project as compared to China’s spot lithium carbonate CIF Asia price, with the spot price shedding light on price movements on a shorter-term basis.

China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of lithium carbonate, and our future depends on North America taking that mantle back. With China calling the shots on commodity pricing, they are the primary factor contributing to spot lithium price instability. Questions about credibility of their information has paved the way for market manipulation and presented major challenges for investors in forecasting market movements. We also see China continuing to stockpile their lithium inventory in a “move analysts see as an effort to alleviate fears of a shortage.”

With the political and economic imperative to decouple from China’s economy, the United States and other geopolitically friendly nations must provide the raw materials for the industrialized world’s green energy revolution.

While the United States holds about 8 million metric tons of lithium in reserve, ranking it among the top five countries in the world, right now only a fraction of the world’s supply is produced at one solitary lithium brine mine in Nevada called Silver Peak, run by Albemarle Corp. America has some of the world’s highest quality, battery grade lithium carbonite, waiting to be developed.

Lithium’s future is green

Benchmark Intelligence forecasts price stability in 2024 but that the “lithium market balance remains fragile” with “only a single major project delay throwing this narrow surplus into a deficit.” Benchmark “estimates the market will return to deficit from 2028, with prices expected to react 12 months ahead of the deficit emerging. They expect the deficit to reach 390,000 tons in 2030 and 1,900,000 tons by 2040.

The current reverses in lithium pricing “provides a good buying opportunity for lithium stocks as demand growth over the next decade should support long-term prices, according to Wilsons Advisory with BloombergNEF projecting global demand for lithium to grow nearly five times by the end of the decade.

Armed with the ability to bring substantial new lithium production and refining operations online, we will be able to meet surging demand from the lithium-ion battery and energy metal supply chains. We will see higher prices for lithium carbonite that ensure today’s low prices will cure today’s market doldrums.

Graham Harris is Chairman and Director of Surge Battery Metals Inc., a pure-play lithium company focused on its flagship project Nevada North Lithium Project in Elko County. He was previously founder, chair and director of Millennial Lithium Corp., which was acquired by Lithium Americas.

Wafer FOB China prices have stayed consistent for the third consecutive week due to a lack of significant changes in the market fundamentals. Mono PERC M10 and G12 wafer prices remain steady at $0.246 per piece (pc) and $0.357/pc, respectively.

Cell manufacturers who intend to keep up production throughout the Chinese New Year break have started to accumulate raw materials, which has increased the volume of wafers traded. The amount of wafers produced and in stock is adequate to meet downstream demand, momentarily dashing wafer makers’ expectations of additional price increases.

Divergent views exist regarding the near-term outlook for wafer prices in the marketplace. According to a market observer, polysilicon companies appear to be banding together to drive up polysilicon prices perhaps as a result of the relative scarcity of N-type polysilicon. This foundation may lead to an increase in wafer pricing, the source said, adding that wafer makers may boost prices even if demand does not recover in the near future because of manufacturing cost considerations.

On the other hand, a downstream market participant believes that there aren’t enough fundamental prerequisites for price hikes in the supply chain market as a whole due to the oversupply of upstream materials. The polysilicon production output in January is expected to be equivalent to about 70 GW of downstream products, significantly greater than the module’s January production output of roughly 40 GW, according to this source.

OPIS learned that only the major cell producers will continue regular production throughout the Chinese New Year break, with nearly half of the existing cell capacity in the market suspending production during the holiday.

The wafer segment is expected to reduce plant operating rates during Chinese New Year but is less evident as compared to the cell segment, resulting in higher wafer inventories in February that may exert downward pressure on wafer pricing in the coming weeks.

OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.

In a joint letter to President Joe Biden, Senators Ossoff (D-GA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) urged for the increase of tariffs on solar modules, cells and wafers imported from China. The Senators said Biden can increase tariffs via the Trade Act of 1974.

The Senators argue that the United States cannot price-compete with China for solar panels, which Wood Mackenzie reported fetch an average price of $0.15 per W. This is about 60% cheaper than the average U.S.-made panel.

The United States has shown a commitment to nearshoring its clean energy supply chain for national security and energy security purposes. The U.S. supports domestic solar manufacturing through component-level production tax credits, demand-side tax credit adders with domestic content adders, and more. However, the Senators argue that China’s heavy subsidization of its solar industry makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to compete.

Bloomberg reported that China installed 216.9 GW of solar last year, eclipsing its record of 87.4 GW from the previous year. This equates to more solar installed in one year than the United States has achieved in its entire history.

“China’s aggressive subsidies for its own solar manufacturing industry demonstrate its intent to control the industry globally. By 2026, China will have enough capacity to meet annual global demand for the next ten years. This capacity is an existential threat to the U.S. solar industry and American energy security,” said the letter to the President.

Since the United States passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contained Ossoff’s Solar Energy Manufacturing for America (SEMA) bill, the U.S. has announced over 162 major manufacturing projects, leading to over 60,000 estimated jobs and over $60.7 billion in investments announced. Many of these announcements include global companies setting up manufacturing operations in the United States for the first time.

Despite this unprecedented level of investment in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, many of these projects are announcements and are in early stages. The Senators argue more needs to be done to level the playing field.

“These heavily subsidized and artificially low prices put U.S. solar manufacturers at an extreme disadvantage during a critical turning point in the development of the domestic solar manufacturing industry. Section 301 tariffs are needed to avoid dire consequences not only for our economic and national security, but also for the thousands of workers employed by these manufacturers,” said the letter.

Auxin Solar, a small solar panel manufacturer with operations in California, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Department of Commerce for failing to collect fees and credits from solar imports related to antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) laws.

Auxin began a long saga related the enforcement of AD/CVD on solar goods imported to the U.S. when it filed a petition alleging that four Southeast Asian nations were in violation of trade laws.

Solar component suppliers in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, responsible for roughly 80% of the U.S. supply at the time, were alleged to be in violation of harboring tariff-dodging goods from Chinese manufacturers. Goods found in violation of AD/CVD laws can be assessed with tariffs as high as 50% to 250%.

In June 2022, President Joe Biden issued a moratorium on solar tariffs, pausing any collection of fees for two years. The move came as solar industry advocates pleaded with the administration to halt tariffs, citing a great deal of uncertainty and solar project delays and cancellations related to the financial risk of tariff assessments.

Auxin argued in the December 29, 2023 suit that Commerce and CBP are not required to follow Biden’s executive order placing a moratorium on tariffs. Biden reaffirmed the June 2022 order in April 2023 with a veto.

The solar panel manufacturer claimed that it was unlawful for Commerce to enact procedures that prevent the application of AD/CVD tariffs, the liquidation of seized assets, and the collection of cash deposits for imported solar goods. It requested that the Court of International Trade reject the moratorium as “an abuse of discretion” by Commerce.

The lawsuit claims Commerce has supported “lawless” solar cell and module marketplace characterized by “a massive and sustained” wave of cheap solar components. Auxin and its co-plaintiff Concept Clean Energy claim the pause on tariff collection has denied its right to relief from dumped Chinese products.

Read more about the AD/CVD saga and its implications for U.S. solar component supply from an online reissue pv magazine print edition: “A moral trilemma for U.S. solar procurement.”

From pv magazine global

Chinese solar module manufacturer Longi has achieved a power conversion efficiency of 27.09% for an HBC solar cell. Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research (ISFH) has confirmed the result.

Longi said the result was enabled through a new laser graphical process that costs less than conventional high-cost photolithography processes.

“This substitution has effectively reduced the cost of the BC cell,” the company said in a statement, noting that the HBC architecture also minimizes the reliance on traditional indium-based transparent conductive oxide (ITO). “This breakthrough has propelled the commercialization of HBC solar cells, featuring independent intellectual property and cost-effectiveness.”

In early November, Longi announced a power conversion efficiency of 33.9% for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell.

It claimed the world’s highest efficiency for silicon cells in November 2022, with a 26.81% efficiency rating for an unspecified heterojunction solar cell.

From pv magazine Australia

New draft rules from the U.S. Department of Energy state that enterprises “owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction” of China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, will not be eligible for subsidies under the nation’s USD 369 billion ($550 billion) IRA, nor the USD 550 billion Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

The upper limit of both direct stakes or “cumulative” investment is 25%, according to the draft guidance.

China is far and away Australia’s biggest trade partner, including for lithium and other critical minerals. China’s dominance in the sector has meant that a number of Australian projects have substantial Chinese ties. These ties come in the form of Chinese project ownership, investment, and off-take agreements.

For instance, Western Australian project Greenbushes, which produces most of Australia’s lithium, is owned by Chinese company Tianqi and U.S. giant Albermarle. Tianqi also holds a majority stake in the Kwinana lithium hydroxide refinery, which produced Australia’s first commercial quantities of battery-grade lithium hydroxide in 2022.

To continue reading, please visit our pv magazine Australia website. 

From pv magazine global

The FOB China prices of both PERC and TOPCon Mono M10 cells, the mainstream size of solar cells in the current solar market, continued their downward trajectory and were assessed at $0.0550 per W and $0.0616/W this week, respectively. This marks their lowest prices ever, according to OPIS data, amid falling prices of the entire supply chain and weak demand in China and its key export market.

Cell prices were negatively impacted by the ongoing price decline of the supply chain in China. Prices for China polysilicon and Mono PERC M10 wafers both decreased this week by 4.07% and 0.40%, respectively. The price of Mono PERC modules is approximately CNY1.011 ($0.14)/W, which is extremely close to the industry’s psychologically low value of CNY1/W, while the prices of TOPCon modules are slightly higher at CNY1.077/W.

OPIS learned from its market survey that cell manufacturers are making every effort to lower production costs as they are experiencing losses. One of the approaches is to buy wafers of reduced quality. According to a cell supplier, the Mono PERC M10 wafers with reduced quality are available on the China market for CNY1.7/pc while good quality wafers are still priced between CNY2.2/pc and CNY2.3/pc. This may resonate with a few downstream users who have been worried about the impact that this competition to cut production costs may have on module quality for 2024.

Another strategy for cell manufacturers to cut production costs is to outsource their production to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). OPIS has learnt from the marketplace that a major cell manufacturer has an extremely high operating rate, as it has won numerous contracts from other cell companies that have outsourced their cell production.

According to OPIS’ market survey, manufacturers who outsource cell production benefit from the low cost brought by the high operating rates of OEMs, and could provide Mono PERC M10 cells at lower than CNY0.43/W in the China market. Those who continue to produce at low operating rates in their own production facilities are still offering it at around CNY0.45/W.

Sentiment in China remains bearish. According to the National Energy Administration, China deployed 13.62 gigawatts (GW) of solar in October, which presents a month-to-month decrease of 13.69%. This is the third straight month that China’s newly installed solar capacity has declined.

China’s key export markets continue to offer little sunshine. A state-owned cell manufacturing enterprise claims that sales of its cells have been hindered since the second half of the year, especially in the cell export market. Purchasing Chinese cells has become a rare occurrence for their Southeast Asian consumers, although formerly they did so regularly.

“The module producers cannot use Chinese cells if they want to ship their products to the US market; the local Southeast Asian market has a very limited solar capacity to digest Chinese cells and modules,” this supplier explained.

Looking ahead, the industry anticipates that the price of Mono PERC M10 cells will continue to decrease, with industry discussions suggesting that it may drop to approximately CNY0.4/W very soon in the Chinese domestic market. This indicates that the sentiment in the cell market will remain subdued.

OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data, and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals, and chemicals, as well as renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly Report.

Maxeon Solar Technologies, a leading solar module manufacturer, has been exonerated from allegations of using Uyghur forced labor in their polysilicon supply chain. This conclusion comes from Laura Murphy, policy advisor to the Under Secretary in the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and author of the report, ‘Over Exposed: Uyghur Region Exposure Assessment for Solar Industry Sourcing.’

On her LinkedIn page, Murphy announced that after a series of engagements with Maxeon, her team has updated their assessment of the company.

Murphy noted:

Based on substantive information submitted to Sheffield Hallam by Maxeon Solar Technologies, we updated our report with a reassessment of Maxeon modules, assessing the company’s exposure to the XUAR as NONE (unverified).

The reassessment acknowledges the extensive data Maxeon shared regarding their procurement processes and the implementation of comprehensive tracking and verification within their supply chains. The dialogue between Murphy and Maxeon, which also involved other manufacturers, is publicly accessible via their website, within Annex A: Corporate Responses.

The initial exchange with Maxeon began on July 27, 2023, as Maxeon contested implications of forced labor in their supply. The subsequent discourse is recorded in a ten-page email thread, found within the same document.

The revision was influenced by three pivotal pieces of evidence:

1. A disclosure detailing suppliers of wafers, polysilicon, and metal-grade silicon (MGS) for the production of Gen 3 and Gen 6 cells since 1 January 2023. This includes Maxeon’s supply chain map, which was previously submitted to Sheffield Hallam and featured in the original report, and has since been published online.

2. An assertion that Maxeon demanded its suppliers to refrain from using XUAR-sourced materials in the entire supply chain, although this claim remains unverified.

3. Maxeon’s insistence that their suppliers, OCI and TCL Zhonghuan, source exclusively non-XUAR materials for Maxeon-specific products.

Before the reassessment, Maxeon faced a “very high” probability rating for utilizing forced labor-sourced polysilicon. This rating has been downgraded to “None (Unverified)”.

The report defines “none (unverified)” as a scenario where “All polysilicon producers are documented but cannot be independently verified. MGS sourcing locations documented in corporate or other reputable disclosures show none is in the XUAR, but no additional public or official disclosures verify the claim.”

Industry expert Christian Roselund challenged the methodology behind the initial ratings on his LinkedIn:

The supply chain maps provided for the Maxeon 3/5/6 and SunPower X-/A-/M-Series never verified a connection to Xinjiang – they merely assumed it based on limited and inconclusive evidence. In violation of the report’s own stated methodology, other nodes and supply chains are given “very high” scores simply because the report’s authors did not find all of the information they were looking for.

The recent update to Murphy’s full forced labor report, which now includes the fresh insights about Maxeon, originally assigned a “very high” rating partly because of the lack of specific information. The report observed, “Without clear supply chain disclosures that would account for wafer sourcing, analysis of the current Maxeon 3/5/6 supply chain depends on analysis of Maxeon’s investment and business relationships.”

Such affiliations, linked to entities with ties to the Xinjiang region, led to the presumption that Maxeon’s solar cells were sourced there as well.

The recent report “How will China’s expansion affect global solar module supply chains?” finds that China’s policy support for and investment in manufacturing across the solar supply chain will keep the country on top in terms of capacity through 2026.

China has invested an estimated $130 billion into its solar industry this year, according to the Wood Mackenzie report. With more than 1 TW of wafer, cell and module forecast to come online in the next year, China will have enough capacity to meet global demand through 2032, the report says.

“China’s solar manufacturing expansion has been driven by high margins for polysilicon, technology upgrades and policy support,” said Huaiyan Sun, senior consultant at Wood Mackenzie, and author of the report. “And despite strong government initiatives for developing local manufacturing in overseas markets, China will still dominate the global solar supply chain and continue to widen the technology and cost gap with competitors.”

The report forecasts that China will hold more than 80% of the world’s polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module manufacturing capacity from 2023 to 2026. In addition, not only will the country dominate in capacity, its product will come at a lower cost. For example, the report says that a module made in China is half the price of that made in Europe and 65% less than that made in the U.S.

This comes as no surprise because, as noted at the recent pv magazine Roundtables US 2023, building a supply chain takes time. It has been just over a year since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the U.S., which includes $370 billion to support renewable energy build out. Expert panelists noted that they expect the U.S. to be heavy with downstream solar manufacturing, and “we’ll have to continue to rely on imports from foreign partners for polysilicon, ingots and wafers to the U.S.,” said MJ Shiao, vice president of supply chain and manufacturing for the American Clean Power Association. Shiao estimated that it can take from three to five years to build new polysilicon manufacturing.

The buildout of U.S. solar manufacturing will begin with modules, which Shiao said is the smart way to go to ensure that we meet the downstream demand, then start to look for more of the upstream part of the supply chain to meet domestic demand. But upstream manufacturing takes time, the panelists agreed.

“Despite considerable module expansion plans, overseas markets still cannot eliminate their dependence on China for wafers and cells in the next three years,” Sun said.

The U.S. isn’t the only region seeking wafer and cell capacity. As seen in the chart below, Europe and the U.S. both have polysilicon and module capacity, but fall far short in wafers and cell. Southeast Asia, on the other hand, has nearly matched capacity for cells and modules, with India not far behind. But India is also experiencing a strong build out in solar manufacturing, thanks to strong government policy in the form of PLI incentives, and the Wood Mac report forecasts that India will overtake Southeast Asia as the second-largest module production region by 2025.

As other regions are slower to ramp up cell production, China will continue to be the leader in capacity, holding an estimated 17 times more cell capacity than the rest of the world.

However, it is not without its challenges. The report notes that China has recently announced the termination of more than 70 GW in capacity due to oversupply and competition. This mainly concerns old production lines that produce lower efficiency P-type and M6 cells. Wood Mac analysts expect P-type cells to decline to just 17% of supply by 2026.

Longi said this week that it has achieved a power conversion efficiency of 33.9% for a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell.

The company said that NREL has confirmed the results, which represent a world record for this cell typology. The previous record was held by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which achieved a 33.7% efficiency for a device with the same configuration in June.

“The theoretical efficiency of perovskite-silicon tandem cells is 43%, which makes them the most feasible alternative to current mono-junction silicon cells,” said Longi President Li Zhenguo, without providing technical details.

In June, Longi reported an efficiency of 33.5% for the same cell. The European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) certified the results, which represented a significant increase on its previous 31.8% efficiency rating, which was announced during the SNEC conference in late May in Shanghai, China.

Longi has broken the world record for solar cell efficiency 15 times since April 2021. It claimed the world’s highest efficiency for silicon cells in November 2022, with a 26.81% efficiency rating for an unspecified heterojunction solar cell.

From pv magazine India

Global investments in the solar energy sector touched the $308 billion mark in 2022, registering a massive increase of 36% over 2021 levels. Still, solar accounted for only 11.5% of the overall energy investment in 2022 ($2.6 trillion), according to a new report by the International Solar Alliance, released at its recent sixth assembly in New Delhi

The report stated that solar investments are overwhelmingly concentrated in a few developed countries in the Asia Pacific Region, followed by Europe and North America. In 2022, Asia Pacific and Europe and North America accounted for 55% and 33% of global solar project development investment, respectively. Within these regions, investments have been dominated by economies that have a mature PV market, such as China, the United States, Japan, Spain, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, Brazil, Vietnam, Germany, and India. 

China and the United States have consistently attracted the most annual solar investments, with their combined share of about 50% of all solar investments since 2015. Only a small fraction of global investments in the solar sector is being made in emerging and developing economies such as the Middle East and Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Thus, these regions are lagging behind in the race of solar energy deployment.

The report states that to accelerate global investments in solar energy, it is vital to prioritize these developing and underdeveloped regions across the world that have a huge unrealized solar potential.

Solar project development accounted for nearly 90% of the total investments made across the solar value chain in 2022. Segment wise, utility-scale solar segment accounted for the highest investments in solar project deployment with a share of 43% followed by residential solar segment at 39% and commercial & industrial (C&I) solar segment at 18% in 2022.

Private finance was a major contributor to solar energy projects, accounting for more than 80% of total investments between 2015 and 2022. The public sector contributed to the remaining investments during the same period. 

The report states that for ensuring just energy transition and inclusion, more finance needs to be mobilized from public players as most of the private financing is directed towards advanced economies.

Hoymiles, headquartered in Hangzhou, China, announced it has released a series of microinverters for the North American commercial and industrial solar sector. The HMT-2000-4T-NA series of microinverters can be paired with up to four solar modules. 

The three-phase microinverters are designed to accommodate high-powered PV modules, and support peak power output of up to 2000 VA. The maximum DC input current is 16 A. It offers a CEC peak efficiency of 96.5%. 

The device has two maximum power point trackers (MPPT) and an MPPT voltage range between 16 V and 60 V. 

Designed for the North American grid, the microinverter is compatible with three-phase Delta network configurations. The microinverter is designed to support up to four solar modules, typically ranging from 400 W to 670 W or more each. Hoymiles said the four-module design makes the inverter a fast and cost-effective option. 

The device can be connected to the S-Miles Cloud platform, enabling module-level monitoring and remote operations and maintenance. It contains Sub-1G wireless connection, offering communication stability and real-time monitoring capabilities. 

The inverter also contains rapid shutdown devices and an isolated transformer for improved safety. The inverter’s enclosure is IP67 rated for outdoor use. It is cooled by natural conection with no fans. 

“[The microinverter] offers unmatched performance, efficiency, and safety, and we are confident it will redefine the standards for commercial and industrial solar installations in North America,” said Rocky Gao, chief executive officer, Hoymiles US. 

Hybrid inverter 

Last month, Hoymiles also introduced a new single-phase hybrid inverter for the North American market, designed for residential and small commercial solar-plus-storage projects.

The inverters come in sizes ranging from 3.8 kW to 11.5 kW output power. Hybrid inverters enable two-way conversion of electricity from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC), as well as DC to AC.

The hybrid inverters sport a max efficiency of 97.6% and a CEC efficiency of 97%. Double maximum power point (MPPT) trackers support up to 32 A of MPPT current. The inverters support 120 V / 240 V backup power without requiring the installation of an external autotransformer.

Hoymiles’ new inverters enable a DC/AC ratio of up to 150%. The company said this leads to a lower system cost when compared with systems of the same capacity using other conventional inverters.

A group of researchers led by China’s Nanjing University has created a global-scale inventory map to determine the spatio-temporal distribution of floating photovoltaics.

“Existing statistical reports on water-surface photovoltaics (WSPV) only provide aggregated summary statistics but lack spatiotemporal information, which hinders the environmental assessment and policy management,” the research’s lead author, Shanchuan Guo, told pv magazine. “We developed a new and adaptive workflow for identifying WSPV using satellite imagery and integrating multiple spectral indices.”

In the paper “Mapping global water-surface photovoltaics with satellite images,” published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Review, the research group explained it combined multi-source data and mapping results to assess the geographic distribution and characteristics of WSPV s and produce an an up-to-date spatial database.

The water mask was based on the global surface water dataset (GSW) created by the European Union’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), which provides the annual spatial distribution of surface water from 1984 to 2020.

“WSPVs are spectrally distinct from most land cover types and can be identified by remote sensing once they are larger than the satellite pixel size,” the scientists specified. “We used Google Earth images and Sentinel satellite imagery from 2019 to 2021 to examine and modify the type changes of WSPV validation samples over three years, and finally obtained the annual correctly labeled validation samples.”

The academics claim that the proposed approach enables the mapping of WSPVs over large areas at high resolution. They found that the water areas covered with floating PV installations increased from 187.0 km2 to 272.0 km2 between 2019 and 2021. They also estimated estimated a global installed WSPV capacity of 12.9 GW.

“The results advanced the understanding of the global spatial-temporal dynamics of the recent WSPV development and will be useful for informing future global and regional renewable planning and management for policymakers and project stakeholders,” they stressed.

The research group also hosted scientists from Michigan State University and the Shanghai Jiaotong University.

From pv magazine Global

Bslbatt, a Chinese storage system manufacturer, has released MacthBox HVS, a residential battery that can operate at an elevated voltage level ranging from 204.8 V to 716.8 V.

“It integrates seamlessly with multiple inverter brands such as Solis, Hypontech, Solplanet, and Deye, enabling homeowners to maximize clean energy and reduce their carbon footprint,” the company said.

The batteries feature individual battery modules with voltage s of 102.4 V. They can be stacked in series with two to seven battery modules.

“MacthBox’s modular design simplifies installation and allows for scalability. A single battery module is 5.32 kWh and weighs 50 kg. Homeowners can start with a basic setup and then expand as energy needs grow,” Bslbatt said.

The manufacturer offers six versions of the new product, with storage capacities ranging from 10.64 kW to 37.27 kWh. The smallest unit measures 665 mm x 330 mm x 425 mm and weighs 112 kg, while the largest unit measures 665 mm x 330 mm x 1,175 mm and weighs 372 kg.

The batteries use LiFePO4 as the cathode material and have an operational temperature range from -10 C to 65 C. They are backed by a 10-year warranty and claim a lifespan of over 6,000 cycles, featuring an IP65 protection rating, with an expected operating life of up to 15 years, according to the manufacturer.

Runergy, a solar module manufacturer established in China in 2013, introduced a series of solar module lines at the RE+ conference in Las Vegas. The company displayed both N-type and traditional PERC cell technology.

Among the new modules displayed was a 54 half-cell N-type module with a full black aesthetic designed for rooftop applications. The module is a small, lightweight format that carries 425 W of maximum output power.

The new module, HY-DH108N8B, sports a 22% efficiency rating. It measures 68 in by 45 in x 30 x 1 in and weighs 53 lbs. The module has an 80% bifaciality rating.

The company also introduced two N-type modules with 72 and 78 half cells, designed for ground mounted projects and tracker systems. These modules carry between 560 W to 625 W of maximum output power and carry a 22.6% efficiency rating. Full specifications can be found here.

The 72 cell modules received an “Overall Highest Achiever” designation from the Renewable Energy Test Center (RETC). Read more about module evaluation and testing from RETC’s PV Module Index.

All the new modules come with a 15-year product warranty, 30-year linear power warranty, and have protection for 1% degradation in the first year, 0.4% in subsequent years.

Runergy has grown to a 50 GW annual cell shipment of 50 GW in its ten years of operation.

In addition to releasing a new series of modules, the company inked strategic partnerships at RE+. Hyperion, the high-end brand of Runergy, signed a strategic agreement with Nanosun to enter markets like Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. It also entered agreement with Grape Solar, focusing on the U.S. market.

Hoymiles introduced the HYS-LV-USG1 series of single-phase hybrid inverters, designed for residential and small commercial solar-plus-storage projects.

The inverters come in sizes ranging from 3.8 kW to 11.5 kW output power. Hybrid inverters enable two-way conversion of electricity from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC), as well as DC to AC.

The hybrid inverters sport a max efficiency of 97.6% and a CEC efficiency of 97%. Double maximum power point (MPPT) trackers support up to 32 A of MPPT current. The inverters support 120 V / 240 V backup power without requiring the installation of an external autotransformer.

Hoymiles’ new inverters enable a DC/AC ratio of up to 150%. The company said this leads to a lower system cost when compared with systems of the same capacity using other conventional inverters.

The inverters come with integrated arc fault protection and rapid shutdown features. The inverters also allow users to check real-time system data and perform remote operations and maintenance via a transfer stick.

An onboard energy management system allows users to shift between self-consumption mode, “economic mode,” and backup power mode to suit their needs.

“By acting as a medium between solar and grid energy, we ensure electricity is not just accessible but also adaptable and reliable,” said Neutron Wang, product director, Hoymiles. “With our latest inverters, we are pushing the frontiers of solar technology, fostering energy autonomy.”

Founded in 2012, Hoymiles is a global module-level power electronics (MLPE) solution provider specializing in module-level microinverters, storage systems and rapid shutdown systems.

Power options for the hybrid inverters: 

 Find spec sheets for the new products here. 

A year removed from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, which created long-term industrial policy anchored by rich supply-side and demand-side incentives for manufacturing solar components, large global companies are betting big on U.S. manufacturing.

Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, and Longi have each announced 5 GW solar module manufacturing facilities, adding a combined 15 GW of capacity. To put the investments in context, each of these factories represent $200 million to $600 million in capital expenditure.

Prior to the IRA, the U.S. had about 7 GW of module manufacturing capacity in 2021. As of April 2023, American Clean Power shared that an eight-month period, 46 utility-scale clean energy manufacturing facilities were announced, bringing an expected 18,000 or more U.S. jobs. Since then, several more major announcements, including the three panel giants’ factory openings, have followed.

“The times of supply shortages are over,” said Thomas Koerner, senior vice president, Canadian Solar in an interview with pv magazine USA at the RE+ conference in Las Vegas.

Canadian Solar told pv magazine USA it is moving significant capacity into the United States to meet customer demand. A 10% adder to the investment tax credit is applied to projects that meet a certain threshold of U.S.-made components, driving developers to shift their procurement decisions.

The move may also indicate the three companies looking to adjust to the new enforcement of anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) laws. Whereas the production of a solar cell used to determine the nation of origin in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol enforcement of AD/CVD tariffs, but that has changed and the production of wafers is now used to determine the nation of origin in production.

The change in enforcement has drawn some fire from industry advocates and global panel suppliers. AD/CVD uncertainties led the supply of utility-scale solar panels to dry up in 2022, leading to a cascade of delayed and cancelled projects and a deployment downturn in a year that was expected to bring installation growth.

Read industry reactions to the changes in enforcement of AD/CVD tariffs here. A guide to avoiding being assessed with AD/CVD tariffs can be found here.

For Canadian Solar, the new U.S. production represents choice for its customers. The company has 12 GW of production of its TOPCon modules in Thailand, and 5 GW of production on the way in the U.S. The sites will produce the same panels, but one will produce made-in-USA goods that are expected to qualify for domestic content requirements for the tax credit bonus.

An upcoming pv magazine USA webinar, “Variables to consider in solar module procurement” will address how price is no longer the defining factor in purchasing decisions. Country of origin, differences in quality and degradation rates, and other determining factors will be assessed.

Three factories

Trina Solar announced it will invest about $200 million in a Texas manufacturing plant with an annual manufacturing capacity of 5 GW. Trina’s new factory is expected to begin producing its Vertex line of modules with 210 mm wafers in 2024.

“We have long had a vision to manufacture solar products in the United States, and we are proud of the jobs we are creating and the investment we are making in the Wilmer community,” said Steven Zhu, president of Trina Solar US.

The Trina facility is expected to create 1,500 local jobs.

“As someone who has lived in Texas for more than a decade, I’m proud to bring Trina’s first module factory in the Western Hemisphere to the Lone Star State,” said Zhu.

Longi announced it will partner with utility-scale developer Invenergy to support a 5 GW panel assembly in Ohio. Invenergy said it will invest more than $600 million to construct a 1.1 million square foot crystalline silicon panel manufacturing facility.

Operations are expected to begin in late 2023, and construction on the plant began in April. Over 850 jobs are expected to be created at the site.

“As an American company and a leading developer and operator of solar projects in the U.S., we recognize the importance of having a strong domestic supply chain to meet the fast-growing demand for affordable solar power,” said Art Fletcher, executive vice president, Global Sourcing at Invenergy.

Canadian Solar will also add 5 GW of manufacturing capacity, building a factory in Mesquite, Texas. The site will produce TOPCon solar panels. The company said it will invest $250 million in the factory, creating about 1,500 jobs along the way.

“Establishing this factory is a key milestone that will enable us to better serve our U.S. customers with the most advanced technology in the industry,” said Dr. Shawn Qu, founder and chief executive officer of Canadian Solar. “We hope that this is the first of many long-term investments we expect to make in the U.S. as we think strategically about a sustainable and resilient clean energy supply chain.”

An industry note from Phil Shen, managing director, Roth Capital Partners said that Longi solar panels made with OCI Polysilicon have been released from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). 

Last month, five major suppliers, including BYD, Longi, Canadian Solar, Trina Solar and New East Solar were found in violation of anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) laws. The ruling means that these companies would have to pay tariffs on the circumvented goods to enter the U.S. market or find other pathways to compliance.

Past records of solar AD/CVD tariffs have shown that the fee can be as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. However, the tariffs will not apply until June 2024, when President Biden’s two-year pause lifts.

The note from Roth suggests that Longi panels made from OCI polysilicon are found not to be in violation of circumventing tariffs. Roth said that initial volumes released are limited, and that the move by CBP is an “initial release.”

It said that it may still take about four to eight months to have OCI polysilicon modules flowing smoothly into the U.S.

The terawatt era has arrived, and the world is unprepared. As the industry explodes in volume, solar and related professionals must prepare, adapt – and deploy.

In its recent Q2 PV Supplier Market Intelligence report, Clean Energy Associates (CEA) highlighted significant growth in solar module manufacturing by Chinese solar module manufacturers. From a 405 GW manufacturing capacity in 2022, a projected 114% increase is expected, reaching 866 GW by the end of 2023. Following that, a subsequent 21% surge in 2024 will bring the total to an impressive 1.043 TW globally.

This rapid growth surpassed many industry predictions. Still, insiders within the Chinese government, having played a pivotal role in this boom, likely foresaw such a rise.

A closer look at the numbers reveals that by the end of 2024, Chinese domestic capacity could be responsible for approximately 0.93 terawatts of their total global capacity. Southeast Asia is anticipated to account for less than 7% (0.068 TW), the Americas just over 2% (0.023 TW), and non-China Asian markets might contribute about 1% (0.011 TW).

Major, European and American manufacturers, such as Meyer Burger and First Solar, were not considered in this study. The assessment predominantly revolved around:

The majority of this capacity is earmarked for n-type solar cells. Yet, a bottleneck seems evident in the production process. CEA’s data suggests that cell production lags behind module manufacturing, with wafer and polysilicon ingot capacities trailing by several hundred gigawatts.

China’s heavily centralized solar power market, underpinned by extensive governmental oversight, might see these predictions shift. Whether solar module manufacturing capacities will be fine-tuned remains uncertain.

Aligning with – and surpassing – these projections, Bernreuter Research suggests that long term Chinese plans include up to 3.5 TW of polysilicon manufacturing capacity by 2027. PVEL’s findings indicate that the 3.5 million metric tons of capacity might be operational by the end of next year. Considering 2.2 grams of polysilicon are required for a watt of solar panels, PVEL estimates that polysilicon supplies could generate 1.6 TW of solar modules.

If we build it, will they come?

The question remains: if this manufacturing capacity is available, will there be adequate installers, grid capacity, and batteries to absorb the surplus daytime production?

Analyst Jenny Chase of BNEF splashed a little cold-water on our enthusiasm, pointing out the reality that oftentimes, solar module factory capacity is 1.5 to 3 times greater than actual installed capacity. Underutilization of manufacturing capacity is normal.

Chase noted:

Maybe 1TW will be installed in 2025, but not just because the module factories exist.

BloombergNEF’s recent projections estimate 392 GW to be installed in 2023 and around 500 GW in 2025. These figures are based on their medium volume projections, though they also offer both lower and higher range projections.

Integrating such a large volume safely into the power grid poses daunting technical challenges. The U.S., the world’s second-largest solar market, has experienced delays in interconnections, slowing solar’s rapid ascent. Specifically, the PJM territory, within the broader United States’ Eastern Interconnection region, halted all new renewable energy projects for two years while grappling with hundreds of gigawatts of projects vying for grid access. As the U.S. interconnection queue nears 2 TW of capacity, both the time and cost of connections have escalated.

State markets have also put the brakes on their local distribution markets. When Massachusetts’ SMART program was launched, National Grid’s territory was overwhelmed with applications, causing unforeseen halts in development. Using public data, pv magazine USA predicted that National Grid’s area would instantly fill its entire 800 MW project tranche. Our prediction was spot on. Yet, the utility expressed astonishment, stating, “we’re all a little surprised by how quickly we got to this saturation.” As a result, they slammed the brakes on development, putting a billion dollars of projects on standby.

This unexpected turn prompted a state investigation. Despite this, grid connections remained sluggish, and currently, numerous substations within the state can’t accommodate additional solar projects.

China, the world’s largest renewable market, initially managed the surge in wind and solar by curtailing excess generation. They later developed a nationwide high voltage direct current (HVDC) network to channel power from the interior regions to the densely populated coast.

The growth rate of solar energy is undeniably accelerating. Having achieved our first terawatt of installed solar in early 2022, discussions swiftly transitioned to reaching 1 TW of capacity annually before the end of the decade. We then speculated that a second terawatt might be realized in just three years.

There’s a budding optimism that we might witness a unique milestone: a terawatt installed within a single year in the near future. Truly, that would be an accelerating transition.

The Department of Commerce made its final determination on the ongoing antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) case, finding that major suppliers in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam will be assessed tariffs for circumventing goods. 

The final determination was in line with the preliminary ruling made in December 2022, assessing a blanket finding of circumventing for the four named nations. Only three major suppliers from the four named countries were found not to be in violation: Jinko, Hanwha Qcells and Boviet. 

Clean Energy Associates (CEA) said that certain suppliers will not be able to avoid paying tariffs and are unlikely to export directly to the U.S. market after Biden’s tariff moratorium lifts on June 6, 2024. 

In an industry note, CEA said there are multiple pathways to continue to export to the U.S. duty free: 

1. Use a non-China wafer to make the cells
2. Use no more than two named bill of materials components (backsheets, glass, silver paste, EVA, junction boxes, aluminum frames) from China 
3. Be found not to be circumventing duties

CEA said that most suppliers will find it relatively easy to switch bill of material supply chains under the “no more than two” rule. As a result, CEA said it is likely module supply from Southeast Asia will continue, though some suppliers will likely have to adjust their supply chains to continue to enter the U.S. duty-free.

However, for cells exported directly to the U.S., it is more challenging to avoid duties. These suppliers will not be able to take advantage of the “no more than two” ruling.

“This limits the already scarce potential available supply of cells for U.S. module manufacturers, including the many module factories which have been announced and/or are under construction,” said CEA.

CEA noted that manufacturers in third countries, like India and Mexico, can import PV cells from the named countries, use these in module assembly, and export to the U.S. without being subject to duties. This applies to cells that would otherwise be subject to duties if exported directly to the U.S.

While the final ruling was not a positive or negative surprise in relation to the December 2022 preliminary ruling, it is set to pose challenges in cell supply in the U.S. Read more about the solar industry’s reaction to Commerce’s final ruling here.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has ruled that business units of BYD, Longi Green Energy, Canadian Solar, Trina Solar and New East Solar are in violation of anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) laws.

The five companies were found to be circumventing Chinese solar goods through Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, which are responsible for as much as 80% of the U.S. supply of solar panels. The ruling means that these companies must pay tariffs on the dumped goods to enter the U.S. market.

Past records of solar AD/CVD tariffs have shown that the fee can be as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. However, the tariffs will not apply until June 2024, when President Biden’s two-year pause lifts. 

The looming threat of tariffs led to a freeze in the utility-scale solar industry in 2022, pulling back by deployments by about 16% on a year that was expected to bring booming growth.

The solar industry reacted to this ruling which is expected to have a considerable impact on solar panel supply in the U.S.

Abigail Ross Hopper, president and chief executive officer, Solar Energy Industries Association:

“The U.S. Department of Commerce is out of step with the administration’s clean energy goals, and we fundamentally disagree with their decision. The United States is experiencing a $20 billion solar manufacturing renaissance because of policies in the Inflation Reduction Act that incentivize private investment in this country. However, it will take at least 3-5 years to ramp-up domestic solar manufacturing capacity and the global supply chain will be vital in the short-term. This case will just make it harder for American businesses to keep deploying, financing, and installing solar power.”

Steven Zhu, president, Trina Solar U.S.:

“We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in cell and module production in Thailand and Vietnam and most recently another large-scale wafer production facility in Vietnam. In our view, characterizing this production as only minor processing is not an accurate assessment of the facts and against common sense. Commerce’s decision that cell production is minor processing increases the risk that all current and future U.S. cell production will face similar attacks. By undermining the significance of cell production and cutting off supplies and disrupting U.S. demand for solar as it is ramping up, Commerce has made it much harder for companies to predict how the U.S. market will function going forward.”

Gregory Wetstone, president and chief executive officer, American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE):

“Like most sectors of the American economy, the solar industry has a global supply chain and needs continued access to imported components until U.S. manufacturing capabilities are fully ramped up. So over the past week, we’ve gone from toasting the anniversary of the IRA and its positive impacts on America’s energy transition to lamenting the imposition of harmful solar tariffs that will severely constrict solar availability in the U.S. While ACORE will continue working with its members and sector allies to build a domestic solar manufacturing base that supports high-quality jobs, the policy whiplash now being inflicted on the U.S. solar industry is incredibly disruptive and will only delay our nation’s clean energy progress.” 

Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-08):

“American workers can compete with anyone if they are given a level playing field. But right now, Chinese solar companies are benefitting from unfair trade practices, including state subsidies and forced labor practices. The Commerce Department’s own independent report shows that Chinese solar companies are violating existing trade laws and evading U.S. tariffs, hurting Michigan workers. Considering these findings, the administration should immediately reinstate tariffs to hold bad actors accountable.”

George Hershman, chief executive officer, SOLV Energy:

“This decision rests on shaky analysis and its impact jeopardizes the momentum of solar energy in the U.S., especially as the industry continues to recover from pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions. It will cause business uncertainty and potentially delay clean energy projects, costing American jobs and hindering the Biden Administration’s clean energy goals. Our collective focus should be on fostering smart policies that accelerate clean energy deployment nationwide, generating quality American jobs and bringing reliable and affordable power to more communities. Detrimental trade barriers like this one run counter to our efforts to meet deployment goals while the industry capitalizes on the incentives provided in the Inflation Reduction Act to boost domestic manufacturing and grow our national supply chain.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce has ruled that business units of BYD, Longi Green Energy, Canadian Solar, Trina Solar and New East Solar are in violation of anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) laws.

The five companies were found to be moving tariff-dodging Chinese solar goods through Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, which are responsible for as much as 80% of the U.S. supply of solar panels. The ruling means that these companies would have to pay tariffs on the circumvented goods to enter the U.S. market or find other pathways to compliance.

Past records of solar AD/CVD tariffs have shown that the fee can be as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. However, the tariffs will not apply until June 2024, when President Biden’s two-year pause lifts.

The looming threat of tariffs led to a freeze in the utility-scale solar industry in 2022, pulling back by deployments by about 16% on a year that was expected to bring booming growth. Biden’s pause was meant as a bridge as panel makers ramp up production on U.S. shores and international suppliers improve the traceability of their supply chains. 

Notably, major panel suppliers Hanwha Qcells, Jinko and Boviet were found to not be in violation of AD/CVD laws.

The AD/CVD saga began when a small California-based solar manufacturer Auxin Solar filed a petition in 2021.

“When prices of finished panels from Southeast Asia come in below our bill of materials cost, American manufacturers cannot compete,” Mamun Rashid, chief executive officer, Auxin Solar told CNN. “If foreign producers are circumventing U.S. law and causing harm to U.S. producers like Auxin Solar, it needs to be addressed.”

The U.S. enforced anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made solar components for a decade after a Commerce investigation found Chinese companies were receiving large government subsidies that kept their prices artificially low. The five companies found in violation and others will face the same tariff duty rates the U.S. currently assesses on Chinese-made products.

“Trina has created thousands of American jobs, billions of dollars in U.S. investment and clean energy for millions of Americans by providing competitively priced solar panels that are ethically sourced,” said Steven Zhu, president of Trina Solar U.S.

“We take issue with the Commerce Department’s circumvention finding. The work we are doing in Thailand and Vietnam is not minor or insignificant and this decision conflicts directly with its decision in the original case that cell production is the most significant production step,” said Zhu.