Rising Polysilicon Prices cast A Shadow On PV Cost Trends For Rest Of 2022

Polysilicon prices have been steadily rising since the beginning of January 2022. Even after steady growth in the first half of 2022, prices were predicted to rise more in June, according to a report.

The report by Onfolink-Group says that when looking at the statistics for the last five weeks, there is still a steady growth in pricing, which is still going on, while PV wafer costs have not increased or fallen at all, and are likely to remain stable even further.

According to the numbers, in early 2022, this price nearly achieved its highest level of the year, which is RMB262/kg. (Equivalent to RMB216.6/kg, or US$32.55/kg, excluding China’s 20% sales tax)

The increase in polysilicon pricing last week is not only the highest single-week increase since the start of the year, but it also pushed average polysilicon prices a striking distance of last year’s record price of RMB 269/kg brought inside.

Since the beginning of this year 2022, polysilicon prices have been higher than what analysts had projected. According to PVInfoLink and BloombergNEF’s predicted polysilicon prices-2022 forecasts, polysilicon prices were expected to fall to RMB180-200/kg by the second quarter of the year, which proved to be completely incorrect. This price has risen to RMB 269/kg.

The prices for June(which is the last month of the second quarter) are 30% higher than the estimated prices, which is a matter of concern for buyers now.
Factors being blamed for the rise include the earthquake in Sichuan last week. Sichuan is one of the main cities which offers PV manufacturing facilities. However, that doesn’t seem to make much sense as an impact on PV-manufacturing capacity would drive prices down if anything, as an  input  material to eventual PV manufacturing.

Surprisingly, if we look at the prices of polysilicon wafers, there is no variation in it. The costs of 166 mm, 182 mm, and 210 mm wafers have been fully consistent over the last four weeks, according to price statistics. When it comes to Longi’s last wafer price update, they released it on the 27th of May, indicating that there has been no rise since their previous price update on the 27th of April.

A solar cell producer, Tongwei has marginally increased the prices of some of its wafers such as 166 mm and 182 mm. These prices increased from RMB1.13/W and RMB1.17/W for the 166mm and 182mm respectively to RMB1.16/W and RMB1.19/W, while the 210mm cell prices are still at RMB1.17/W. are stable.