The Lower The Price, The Higher The Efficiency Of Solar Panels, The Better?

Source: Solarbe PV

Recently, the component bidding of many central state-owned enterprises has been implemented, attracting the attention of many photovoltaic practitioners. From the information released by the media, whether it is the bidding price or the winning price, the price reduction speed has exceeded many people's expectations. The price of 0.6X RMB/W is not uncommon. Even some top 10 manufacturers have begun to participate in low-price competition, and the quotation is 2 cents lower than the industry average, which has brought serious anxiety and panic to the market.

Faced with such a situation, many industry experts expressed their concerns. Recently, Cao Renxian, chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association and chairman of Sungrow Power Supply, publicly called for the orderly development of the industry, organized central state-owned enterprises and photovoltaic manufacturing companies to jointly discuss the bidding price mechanism for photovoltaic power station construction, eliminate the lowest price winning bid, strengthen the "bull's eye price", and adopt a more reasonable price adjustment mechanism. However, it should be pointed out that this process takes time. At present, the internal competition of enterprises is extremely serious, and every penny must be fought for. They would rather not make money than grab orders. Almost no one can be immune.

Some industry experts also said that competition is not uncommon in any industry, but a small number of photovoltaic practitioners have gradually been kidnapped by various parameters and prices in the process of competition, which means they have lost their original intention. "We do photovoltaics to bring cleaner and lower-carbon green energy, not to manufacture photovoltaic modules with the largest size, highest power, or the most economical materials and the cheapest price. There is no need to blindly pursue various world records."

This view has been supported by many people. A component technology expert pointed out that in recent years, the size of components has become larger and larger, and glass and silicon wafers have become thinner and thinner, which may affect product yield and reliability. Taking silicon wafer thickness as an example, when the price of silicon materials remains high, thinning the thickness of silicon wafers is the most direct way to reduce the manufacturing cost of the industrial chain. It can reduce polysilicon consumption, increase the output of silicon wafers, and provide support for cost reduction in batteries and components. However, given the current situation where silicon material prices have bottomed out, it is somewhat inappropriate to emphasize 110μm or even thinner silicon wafers.

As we all know, ultra-thin silicon wafers have higher technical requirements, and thin wafers are more easily damaged during manufacturing, transportation and installation, which requires higher technical levels and more sophisticated operating procedures to avoid. If the process level of battery component companies does not meet the standards, it can affect the company's production yield, and will also weaken the matching and reliability of silicon wafers with downstream batteries and components, which is not worth the loss. In his opinion, many companies emphasize "customer-centricity" in their publicity, but most product innovations revolve around "reducing production costs", and the efficiency of battery components has not been significantly improved. Investment returns and full life cycle reliability, which are topics that customers really care about, are difficult to be effectively guaranteed.

In terms of paying attention to customer needs and improving product value, LONGi is a model in the industry. In May this year, when they released the new Hi-MO 9 product in Madrid, Spain, Chairman Zhong Baoshen proposed that LONGi would strive to pursue the goal of "27.5% mass production efficiency", close to the theoretical limit, but would not blindly increase investment for efficiency values. "The essence of photovoltaics is energy and electricity, which requires products to be manufactured and applied on a large scale. When the efficiency is getting closer and closer to the theoretical limit, the technology used and the precision of processing will become higher and higher, rising exponentially. At this time, the cost will increase significantly, exceeding the market's acceptance capacity. It can only exist in the laboratory and cannot provide support for the development of the national economy."

Based on the above concept, LONGi has taken every step very steadily, not leading or expanding production, and refusing to make rash advances. However, they are very decisive in the BC technology route they have identified. They have successively laid out BC battery module manufacturing bases with a scale of tens of GW in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, Taizhou, Jiangsu, Xianyang, Shaanxi, etc., leading the development of BC technology.

LONGi will release a new distributed product based on HPBC2.0 batteries in October. This product belongs to the same level as Hi-MO 9, and it is likely to use the design of 2382*1134mm in terms of appearance and size. In terms of power, the mass production power based on Hi-MO 9 has reached 660W, and the new distributed products to be released should also be able to reach this level. In terms of efficiency, according to calculations, it is expected to be 1% higher than TOPCon, reaching more than 24.5%, which is not too much pressure for LONGi BC modules.

The relevant person in charge said that LONGi has never paid much attention to the surface content of product parameters, but has focused on more light absorption, higher conversion, and faster transmission per unit area under the mainstream version, so as to achieve more unit power generation and bring more benefits. "When the power of the same version of the module is increased from 630W to 660W, the cost per kilowatt-hour can be reduced by about 5.1% and the payback period can be shortened by about 0.2 years due to the reduction of BOS cost and the increase of power generation. This is what is really given to customers, turning the IRR on paper into reality."

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