Finlay Colville, head of market research at solar media, said that component prices will remain high for at least the next 18 months, additional capacity will be quickly swallowed up by soaring demand, and new capacity outside China is considered risky.
At the European Solar finance and investment (sfie) conference held by PV tech publisher solar media in London, Colville said that the growth in demand for solar modules over the past year, especially since the cop26 climate conference held in Glasgow in November, was incredible.
"I've never seen such a dramatic change in 12 months, and now everywhere is struggling to get a limited supply of components," Colville said
He said that the demand for components is about 25-30% higher than the supply of the industry. About 30% of the components currently produced have never left China, which means that the rest of the world is competing for the remaining 70%.
Polysilicon production capacity is still an obvious bottleneck. In the past 18 months, due to the surge in demand for components and polysilicon, manufacturers have been unable to fully increase production capacity to meet demand. Natural events and energy constraints have curbed China's production capacity, making the situation more complicated.
Colville said component prices are expected to remain high for at least the next 18 months
Colville said that as a result, China's polysilicon manufacturers significantly raised prices, resulting in an increase in operating gross profit of up to 70%.