Good morning, everyone. After a year to meet again, the photovoltaic industry changes two days. The industry suffered the strongest internal volume in history, supply and demand were seriously mismatched, and the industry entered the ice age. Up to now, the four major links of silicon material, silicon wafers, batteries and components have basically fallen below cash costs, and the whole industrial chain is under collective pressure. In the current shock cycle of the photovoltaic industry, the overall production capacity has expanded by about three times, but the profit margin has fallen by about 70 percent.
Trade barriers in Europe and the United States have led to a contraction in external demand and a decline in exports, exacerbating the global imbalance between photovoltaic supply and demand. Photovoltaic staged a super internal volume, the external cause is the supply side homogenization competition, capital blindness, cross-border extrusion, local government investment and agent construction drive, the demand side only low price bid and other factors superimposed, bringing the industry into the “local optimal” rather than “global victory” trap. Looking at the essence through the phenomenon, the internal volume is intensified, which is not unrelated to the misjudgment of the supply and demand relationship of the whole industry, and the industry touching the ceiling of inherent technology, resulting in insufficient access threshold. The technology ceiling determines the industry ceiling, the industry’s existing technology premium and power generation gain margin are reduced, and local technology improvement is not enough to resist the trend change of supply chain imbalance, which is the key to the industrial chain being forced to roll in.
Every market shock is gradually breeding major industrial mutations. Since last year, the photovoltaic industry has continued to reshape the new pattern in the midst of change. At the material and manufacturing end, large bases replace small bases, low energy consumption replaces high energy consumption, high-end intelligent manufacturing of “smart number to network” replaces conventional manufacturing, and the technical route that once blossomed has changed to N-type technology dominates the world. The application side is dominated by big capital and big base, the scene pulls the product, the terminal defines the price, and brings the wave of low price. In this context, photovoltaic as a hot new industry on the track, the emergence of phased, structural supply and demand imbalance is an inevitable phenomenon.
In 2023, the world’s new photovoltaic installed capacity of 446 gigawatts, the cumulative total installed capacity of more than 1600 gigawatts, and the global thermal power over the same period of 2130 gigawatts of total installed capacity of only 530 gigawatts gap. Last year, I predicted at the SNEC conference that 2027 photovoltaic will surpass thermal power to become the world’s largest energy source, and now it seems that this speed is much earlier. According to the current development rate of photovoltaic, the global installed capacity of photovoltaic is expected to remain in the range of 490-550 GW in 2024, which can soon match the installed capacity gap with thermal power. Last year, the total output value of the “new three” represented by photovoltaic in China exceeded 1.7 trillion yuan. The new grid-connected PV capacity of 216 GW is equivalent to the total installed capacity in the past four years. As of the end of April, the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaic in China exceeded 670 GW, and the total installed capacity of the wind reached 1130 GW, which is very close to thermal power. In order to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement, the cumulative installed capacity of the world needs to exceed 5,400 GW in 2030, and by 2040, the global photovoltaic power generation will increase from 2 trillion KWH to close to 40 trillion KWH, ushering in more than 20 times the growth. The photovoltaic industry has huge incremental space, and the long-term fundamentals will not change.
Secondly, the industry has entered the period of new quality productivity, and the revolutionary breakthrough window period of photovoltaic technology has come, which has driven the innovative configuration of production factors and the deep transformation and upgrading of the industry. With FBR granular silicon at the silicon end, TOPCon, HJT, XBC/GBC and other N-type mainstream technologies in the battery link as representatives, science and technology, management and carbon chain are promoted by three lines, resulting in lower cost, higher efficiency, stronger power generation reliability, and more green and low-carbon photovoltaic products. Among them, the improvement of non-silicon technology is the focus of controlling cost variables, and the mass production of copper plating, silver coated copper, silver free coating, OBB, double-sided microcrystal, indium reduction and other technologies has been accelerated, and demetallization has become the key to technology cost reduction. Under the background of vigorously developing new quality productivity, photovoltaic has ushered in a new paradigm of critical technological change, and one of the important roles is perovskite. In the second half of 2024, with the countdown to the production of relevant gigawatt projects, perovskites are about to achieve a critical leap from 0 to 1. At present, China has more than 95% of the perovskite preparation ecological chain, and the industrial supporting capacity is the first in the world. The localization of key equipment and main auxiliary materials of perovskite, as well as the collaborative iteration of upstream and downstream process modules, have created good conditions for perovskite to effectively control “complex and sensitive” materials and achieve stable large-scale mass production. With the completion of the gigawatt mass production line as a sign, China’s perovskite will completely break the “impossible triangle” of high efficiency, large area and long life, and present a perfect sample of the world’s third generation photovoltaic technology. On the road to a new commercial era, high efficiency based on large specifications is the “gold standard” to review its effectiveness, single-junction perovskite batteries, crystalline silicon/perovskite laminated batteries, all-perovskite laminated batteries, flexible thin film/perovskite laminated batteries and other laminated technologies, including nanoscale 3D printing perovskite batteries, are the multiple directions of perovskite application development. Crystalline silicon laminated components are the first step and breakthrough of perovskite commercialization. Perovskite and crystalline silicon technology is not a “zero-sum game”, but a deep embrace of the “lake and sea”. Its flexible adaptability and fit, determines that it can be combined with HJT, TOPCon, BC/GBC and other free combinations, crystal silicon lamination efficiency is expected to increase to more than 35-40% in the future, driving the photovoltaic power cost from parity to low price, from low price to the ultra-low price era divided into computing units.
The starting point of perovskite stack efficiency exceeds the end point of crystalline silicon module efficiency. For the next decade, perovskites will be in a golden age. The theoretical upper limit of perovskite layer conversion efficiency is 45%, and the upper limit of mass production efficiency is about 36%. According to the annual increase of one point, from the efficiency of 27% this year, perovskite will maintain a strong growth trend before 2035. In the next five years, the perovskite laminated battery market is expected to achieve a geometric doubling. Under the joint research and promotion of relevant national laboratories and enterprises, the gigawatt and 10 gigawatt projects of perovskite fully integrate the third generation of photovoltaic new technology, and through the integration of data and process reconstruction, the super manufacturing unit from raw materials to terminal integration is about to be born. In 2025, the production capacity of perovskite laminated components will be gradually increased, large-scale manufacturing will be achieved in 2026, and the production capacity of laminated components will be fully realized in 2027. Perovskite will be a huge late-mover advantage “vertex jump”, pulling the photovoltaic industry out of the “prisoner’s dilemma”.
In the commercial situation of accelerating the “take-off” of low-altitude economy, “photovoltaic + solid state battery + efficient energy storage + super fast charge” builds an energy base for low-altitude economy. By 2025, the market size of China’s low-altitude economy is expected to reach 1.5 trillion yuan, and it is expected to exceed 3.5 trillion yuan by 2035. For low-altitude aircraft, including UAVs, eVTOL(electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle), helicopters, and traditional fixed-wing aircraft, electrification is the main direction of their power technology. The characteristics of the solid-state battery “three high and one fast” (high safety, high energy density, high power and fast charge) meet the technical requirements of the power battery for eVTOL aircraft. On March 27, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments issued the Implementation Plan for the Innovative Application of General Aviation Equipment (2024-2030), which clearly proposed to promote the mass production of 400 watt-hour/kg aviation lithium battery products and realize the application verification of 500 watt-hour/kg aviation lithium battery products. In the next three years, solid-state batteries will rapidly evolve along the path of semi-solid and solid state to meet this technical requirement and progress in mass production. At the ground transportation end, the solid-state battery is equipped with a new generation of high-specific energy silicon carbon anode, and the driving range can be equal to that of fuel vehicles, completely solving the problem of mileage anxiety of electric vehicles.
Up to now, with the joint efforts of the industry, “light storage peers” can provide stable and uninterrupted green electricity for 24 hours, energy storage cells and energy storage system prices have fallen by about half, large cells, large capacity, low cost, high safety energy storage has become the mainstream, the cost of light storage power can be 51 cents in Jiangsu, Mengxi to achieve 39 cents, basically consistent with the price of coal power. It is moving towards the goal of an average price of three cents, and the light storage parity has been achieved. With the localization of major equipment and core materials such as alkaline electrolyzer, hydrogen storage tank, hydrogen transmission pipeline, it is expected that by 2026, the cost of green hydrogen can achieve 10 yuan per kilogram, and the parity of light hydrogen will also be achieved.
Roll inward deeper and deeper, out of danger to find opportunity. At present, the global industrial chain is deeply restructured, and it is inevitable that China’s photovoltaic industry will fully go to sea. Last year, the global PV gigawatt market reached 32 countries, and this year and next year will expand to more than 50 along the “Belt and Road”. Europe, the United States, India and other countries are increasingly attaching importance to the autonomy and controllability of their own industrial chain, and constantly waving the “tariff stick” has forced China’s photovoltaic industry to change from the “curve to the sea” via Southeast Asia to the comprehensive sea, from a single technology and product to the sea, including equipment, raw materials and other industrial chain to the sea. I personally expect that within three to five years, China’s photovoltaic industry will complete the first stage of the whole industrial chain to the sea, facing the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, North Africa, South America and other key global regions, learn from the first stage of the sea experience and lessons, rational use of WTO rules, to establish new advantages of global operations.
Photovoltaic sea, product circulation, green and low-carbon attributes is the most important global pass. In the face of new barriers to global trade such as carbon tariffs and carbon emission verification, carbon footprint has become a “hard constraint” indicator for the global competitiveness of products. Taking 1 GW of photovoltaic modules as an example, the carbon emissions of the main industrial chain are about 280,000 tons, and according to the CBAM rules, at least an additional carbon tax of 100 million yuan will be paid. High-carbon products will lose their competitiveness due to “high carbon price”, and ultra-low carbon footprint and strict carbon chain management will have a future. New quality productivity itself is green productivity, new energy, new materials, new technology race, the final destination is only one – by technology, digital and green premium encircling a low carbon/zero carbon new world, and low carbon/zero carbon new world foundation, is silicon based energy, lithium based energy and digital energy. In the future, almost all industries need to “bundle” development with new energy represented by photovoltaic, and work together to promote double carbon and strengthen new quality productivity.
Post time: Jun-13-2024