The 12th Five-Year Plan for Solar PV Industry is difficult to achieve

The "12th Five-Year Development Plan for Solar PV Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "12th Five-Year Plan for Photovoltaic") was formally announced on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology at the weekend. The plan pointed out that in 2010, China's photovoltaic cell exports exceeded US$20.2 billion, becoming the world's largest exporter of photovoltaic cells, and domestic photovoltaic manufacturing equipment sales revenue also exceeded 4 billion yuan.

The PV 12th Five-Year Plan did not publish the domestic PV installed capacity plans for 2015 and 2020 as previously expected in the industry. Some of them involved energy saving, high-efficiency or high-tech indicators. It is not easy to achieve this.

Polysilicon's technical requirements are one of the core elements of planning.

In 2010, the average power consumption of polysilicon production in China was 160-180 kWh/kg. According to the new plan, the integrated power consumption of polysilicon production in China would be reduced to 120 kWh/kg in 2015, and in addition, the exhaust gas will be restored during production. The recovery of silicon tetrachloride, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen should also be no less than 98.5%, 99%, and 99%.

A high-level polysilicon manufacturing equipment company explained to reporters that it is not difficult for China's polysilicon companies to achieve these targets after installing cold-hydrogenation or thermal hydrogenation equipment. In addition, China’s “Polysilicon Industry Access Requirements” launched in early 2011 also imposes strict regulations on electricity consumption of 60 kWh/kg, compared to the new “12th Five-Year Plan for PV”. The goal of 120 kwh/kg of electricity consumption should be relaxed.

“However, apart from individual PV companies such as GCL-Poly and Daqing Polysilicon, the company has achieved a 10,000-ton polysilicon production scale. Other small-scale PV companies have insufficient investment in technology, coupled with polysilicon demand in the second half of last year. Not so good, prices are plummeting, so some technical indicators may not be easily satisfied."

The "12th Five-Year Plan for Photovoltaic" pointed out that we must support the development of stable electronic-grade polysilicon production technology and establish an electronic-grade polysilicon production line.

However, the high-level polysilicon manufacturing equipment said that it is difficult to say whether China’s electronic-grade polysilicon companies can win the market.

The so-called electronic-grade polysilicon mainly refers to high-purity polycrystalline silicon of “10-9′′ or more, and the low-grade polysilicon that is currently common in the market is “6-9”. The main demand for electronic-grade polysilicon is for semiconductor companies. The annual demand is only tens of thousands of tons, which is a big difference compared to the demand for hundreds of tons of low-grade polysilicon. Therefore, there may be some polysilicon companies in the short-term may not be able to cut into such an industry where demand is not particularly large.

Moreover, the downstream customers of the electronic-grade polysilicon generally only recognize a few brands. For example, the long-term partner of Intel and TSMC is Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical, and they are directly signing long-term orders. Even if domestic companies hope to attract downstream semiconductor customers to purchase their products through price cuts, whether or not these important semiconductor customers can risk their purchases will also be a problem.

“Electronic grade polysilicon is also used in the manufacture and production of monocrystalline silicon cells in addition to semiconductors. Japan's photovoltaic market tends to monocrystalline silicon cells because they have many roof photovoltaic projects and require more efficient monocrystalline silicon. Assuming that the entire international market or the single Chinese market later favors the manufacture of rooftop PV projects, then electronic-grade polysilicon may have more room for development at that time,” the industry source added.

In the future, as for the cost of photovoltaic modules in China and the photovoltaic power price, the 12th Five-Year Plan for photovoltaics also looks ahead. By 2015, the cost of photovoltaic modules will drop to 7,000 yuan/kW, the cost of photovoltaic systems will drop to 13,000 yuan/kW, and the cost of power generation will drop to 0.8 yuan/kWh. By 2020, the cost of photovoltaic modules will drop to 5,000 yuan/kW. The cost of photovoltaic systems dropped to 10,000 yuan/kW, and the cost of power generation dropped to 0.6 yuan/kWh.

Wang Liusheng said that in 2012, China's photovoltaic power price is 1 yuan/kWh. Looking at the new plan, China's on-grid electricity prices will drop by about 20% in the next four years, from 1 yuan to 0.8 yuan. As the price of photovoltaic modules plummeted by about 50% in the past year, the construction cost of photovoltaic projects has already shrunk, which has made a positive plunge for the large-scale downward revision of the on-grid tariffs in the future. Therefore, in 2015, the actual electricity price in China may be lower than the planned “2015 RMB 0.8/kWh”.