Liam Stoker reflects on the worsening crisis affecting solar module manufacturing and supply, with five of the industry's largest manufacturers calling for industry-wide collaborative efforts to resolve it.
Five of the solar industry’s leading module manufacturers have issued a joint statement warning of an impending “crisis” regarding module supplies, imploring developers to consider delaying projects and calling for greater collaboration between upstream and downstream players.
Polysilicon prices have risen by 8.6% to RMB230/kg (US$35.3/kg) this week following a power crisis in China that has seen the government order silicon metal producers to curb their operations.
Russian wholesale electricity market administrator JSC ATS has allocated 775MW of solar PV in the country’s eighth auction round for largescale renewables, which had an average price of ₽5.18/kWh (US$0.071/kWh)
China has appealed a recent World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling that rejected the country’s challenges to the US' safeguard tariffs on certain crystalline silicon PV cells.
As much as 191GW of new solar PV is expected to be installed this year – up by a third on last year’s deployment figure – despite polysilicon and module prices remaining high into 2022, BloombergNEF has said.
Leading ‘Solar Module Super League’ manufacturer JinkoSolar has said it is addressing the reliability of shipments to the US market, while also upgrading its module capacity forecast for this year and teasing an expansion of n-type cell capacity.
Three of the solar industry’s leading manufacturers have launched a standardisation drive aimed at creating a standard for module sizing and mounting hole spacing.
