PV Price Watch

The Silicon Industry Branch said that silicon material prices continued to climb last week, seeing a weekly growth of about 11%.

With silicon material and wafer prices on the rise, the impact is being felt further downstream amid warnings module prices could continue increasing this month.

Prices of various categories of silicon material have increased by 31%, in part due to increased demand from wafer manufacturers.

Polysilicon prices have continued their downward slump, with a weekly decrease of 20%, now nearing the US$20/kg mark.

The downward pricing trend in the upstream of the PV industry has been transmitted to wafer and cell prices and extended to modules.

Polysilicon prices have fallen off a cliff since mid-late December and the downward trend is expected to continue at least until the Chinese new year.

Price monitoring institutions released the latest prices across the PV industrial chain on 15 December, all showing a downward trend.

Silicon wafer prices declined last week, according to figures from the Silicon Industry Branch of the China Nonferrous Metal Industry Association.

With a growing wait-and-see sentiment emerging in the market, the prices of silicon wafers and silicon material at the upstream end have started showing signs of falling.

TCL Zhonghuan cut the price of its solar wafers for the first time this year, with this trend expected to continue as new production capacity comes online across the industry.