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How has the development of my country's photovoltaic industry been in the first half of this year? Every photovoltaic person may have roughly the same feeling: the photovoltaic main materials industry is losing cash, and small and medium-sized enterprises with insufficient strength have been reported to have laid off employees, stopped production, owed debts, and delisted. Head enterprises have increased their cash reserves.

Based on the first half data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the General Administration of Customs, the National Energy Administration and other authoritative departments, Gantanhao briefly summarizes and predicts as follows:

1. Although the production capacity of the photovoltaic manufacturing industry has slightly decreased month-on-month, it is still at a historical high. As the photovoltaic industry leader said, if half of the companies in the market do not die, it may be difficult to say that the bottom has been reached.

2. The export of photovoltaic power generation is uneven, with the volume of photovoltaic main materials rising and the price falling, fluctuating around US$3 billion per month. The inverter is getting better month by month, which is worth looking forward to. The overseas market of photovoltaic main materials in the second half of the year is full of uncertainty. Even if it is repaired, the process will be relatively long.

3. Photovoltaic installed capacity hit a new record in the first half of the year, and is expected to continue to grow in the second half of the year. Gantanhao predicts that it is very likely to achieve 230GW of new installed capacity throughout the year.

01 Photovoltaic export, inverter has a unique landscape

On July 20, the General Administration of Customs updated my country's import and export data for June.

In the first half of this year, my country's exports of main photovoltaic materials (silicon wafers, batteries, and modules) totaled US$18.979 billion, down 35% from US$29.229 billion last year.

In June this year, my country's exports of various types of main solar panels reached US$3.063 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 32.83% and a slight increase of 1.76% from May.

In the first half of this year, my country's inverter exports reached US$4.005 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 28.306% and a year-on-year decrease of 22.89% from US$5.194 billion last year.

It is worth noting that in June alone, my country's inverter exports amounted to US$918 million, a month-on-month increase of 17.69%.

In the first half of this year, my country's photovoltaic material exports hovered around US$3 billion. However, inverters have been growing month by month since February this year, and the inverter overseas market is constantly recovering.

It still needs to be reiterated that the above-mentioned export data of photovoltaic main materials and inverters do not include the export of overseas production capacity of Chinese photovoltaic enterprises, such as Southeast Asia, India or the United States.

02 Solar cells: it is difficult to reduce overcapacity

Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics announced my country's industrial production in June 2024.

In the first half of this year, my country's photovoltaic companies produced a total of 270.24GW of solar cells, up 15.21% year-on-year from 234.57GW in the same period last year.

In May this year, my country produced a total of 49.14GW of solar cells, a year-on-year increase of 4.6%.

As the photovoltaic elimination competition intensifies and some weak manufacturing companies are under-operating, my country's solar cell production has slightly decreased compared with last month. However, it is still in the "tug-of-war" stage. The production capacity base expanded by enterprises is large enough. Even if the operating rate is low, it is unlikely that the output will decline significantly in the short term. There are only two ways to digest this capacity: one is to have a considerable number of enterprises stop production, and the other is to further increase market demand.

03 Will the newly installed photovoltaic capacity reach 2XXGW this year?

Source: Zhihui Photovoltaic; National Energy Administration

On July 20, the National Energy Administration released national power industry statistics for January to June. In the first half of this year, my country's new photovoltaic installed capacity was 102.48GW, a year-on-year increase of 30.7%, much faster than the 12.4% of new wind power installed capacity.

In the past few years, my country's newly installed photovoltaic capacity has been low at the beginning and high at the end, with a rush to install in the last one or two months. This year, the pressure on photovoltaic consumption has further increased, and the distributed market has undergone structural changes. These factors have brought uncertainty to photovoltaic installation in the second half of the year.

Will there be another rush to install solar panels this year? This will depend to some extent on the recent bidding situation and the price trend of solar panels.

The price of photovoltaic modules has been incredibly low. From the trend, there are signs of stabilization, but no one dares to conclude that it will rebound within a few months and return to a reasonable range. After all, small and medium-sized enterprises and even large enterprises have just started to sell their blood to survive. For this reason, even if the five big and six small enterprises have completed the bidding for large projects, they are not in a hurry to buy goods.

Wang Bohua, honorary chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, predicted at the end of February this year that the global photovoltaic installed capacity is expected to be 390-430GW this year, and my country is expected to be 190-220GW. Even if we follow the upper limit of Wang Bohua's prediction, it is equivalent to standing still on the basis of 216.88GW last year.

S&P Global Commodity Insights predicts that my country's actual new installed capacity in 2023 will be 239GW (official data is 216.88GW), and my country will achieve 228GW of new installed capacity in 2024. This forecast is 8GW higher than the upper limit of the forecast of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association.

The agency pointed out that new installations bring many challenges. At present, the pace of investment and construction of my country's power grid infrastructure lags behind the growth of new renewable energy generation, and the lower GDP growth forecast indicates that the growth of electricity demand may slow down. Both of these factors will pose a threat to the output and profitability of solar photovoltaic projects. At the same time, power market reforms have also brought uncertainty to electricity prices, and developers are also faced with challenges in land use rights, available roofs and finding the right business model for future deployment.

Based on the analysis logic of various institutions and various known factors, Gantanhao judges that the photovoltaic installed capacity in the second half of the year will most likely be better than that in the first half of the year, and will still exceed the annual task, but it is unlikely to see the crazy situation of installing 53GW in one month in December last year.

In the second half of last year, 138.46GW was installed. Even if the second half of this year is the same as the same period last year, the total installed capacity for the whole year will reach 240GW!

Therefore, Gantanhao believes that it is not impossible for my country to achieve 230GW or even higher new photovoltaic installed capacity this year. A strong rear base and a strong Chinese market are the basic foundation of Chinese photovoltaic manufacturing companies.

postscript

Hu Hanzhou, Director of the Energy Statistics Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, recently wrote an article titled "Energy supply remained stable in the first half of the year, and the proportion of clean energy consumption increased significantly."

The article points out that in the first half of this year, my country's clean electricity is maintaining rapid growth: industrial power generation above designated size reached 4.4 trillion kWh, up 5.2% year-on-year, 1.4 percentage points faster than the same period last year. Among them, thermal power grew by 1.7%, while hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and solar power grew by 21.4%, 0.1%, 6.9% and 27.1% respectively.

In the first half of the year, total energy consumption in the whole society increased by about 4.7% year-on-year, slowing down by about 0.5 percentage points from the first quarter. The effect of the national policy to support the development of non-fossil energy has gradually emerged, new energy consumption has grown rapidly, and the energy structure has continued to improve. The proportion of clean energy consumption such as natural gas, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and photovoltaic power has increased by 2.2 percentage points compared with the same period last year, and the background of green and clean energy has been further highlighted.

Editor: Detective Carbon