As it enters into February, the off-season market before the long Chinese New Year vacation leads spot prices of certain solar PV products such as polysilicon, wafer and PV cells to drop. Prices of PV modules remain relatively flat because of the decrease of both supply and demand as some manufacturers has started enjoying the vacation.

EnergyTrend finds that the current job of most solar PV manufactures is to clean their stocks. Under such a situation, quote of polysilicon has dropped to US$19/kg following previous weeks’ weak performances. Nonetheless, China’s National Energy Administration has established a 15GW target of solar PV installations in 2015, including 8GW of centralized PV plants and 7GW of distributed PV generations, and this is expected to drive the domestic demand for the nation’s surplus production of polysilicon.

First-tier multi-si wafer manufacturers are mostly working on their full capacity for orders earned before the vacation. They are also focusing on earning orders from abroad. In contrary, most second-tier manufacturers are working on constant OEM orders. The rest manufacturers with smaller capacities are dealing with orders that have to be delivered in mid-February or rush orders. In general, orders in February are affected by the upcoming Chinese New Year and less workdays, so both ultra-high-efficiency and high-efficiency multi-si wafers’ quotes continue to decrease. Quotes of high-efficiency multi-si wafers have dropped 0.23% to US$0.879/piece while the quotes of mono-si wafers reduced to US$1.115/piece due to weak demands and stocks.

Regarding the market of PV cells, although the demand for high-efficiency cells becomes stronger, quotes keep dropping due to, similarly, the Chinese New Year’s day offs. It is impossible for manufacturers to complete the customs declaration processes for either import or export during next week. Adding the fact that orders for Taiwan-made PV cells has already reduced, quotes of multi-si PV cells all decreased in this week. The price of multi-si cells reduced slightly to UD$0.326/w, Taiwan-made multi-si PV cells met a spot price as low as US$0.316/w, while the quote of Chinese multi-si Pv cells dropped to US$0.309/w.

Currently, there are many suspended PV project constructions due to the severe climate, and the situation causes certain impact on demands for PV modules. Thanks that Japan’s demand remains stronger than Europe and America’s, PV modules are mainly focusing on cleaning their stocks. In spite of the overall weaker demand, the module supply reduced because some second- and third-tier manufacturers have already started their vacation and would not be back to work until late February or early March. As the short-term demand decreased along with the short-term supply, quotes of PV modules remain relatively flat compared to other PV products. The price of 250W multi-si PV Modules slightly dropped to US$0.567/w this week.

(Photo Credit: Spot US via Flickr)