Monday, November 3, 2008

China's solar PV industry in cold winter

China's solar PV industry entered into cold winter suddently from hot summer.

Many Chinese solar wafer, solar cell and solar panel manufacturers, including the major PV manufacturers, like Suntech Power, have stopped the production or reduced the production since the product prices are coming down too fast, and there is no margin for them to produce the products at all.

Some source told me that the solar cell production was cut half, and the solar panel production was 30% off at Suntech Power.

When the product price become stable, many manufacturers will recover their productions, and others will get out of the business.

Some companies believe this is a good opportunity for them to kick their competitors out of the market and in future they will have great perspective since the product cost will be reduced to acceptable level and the market demand will be much greater.

Sunda started polysilicon trial production

2008 October 20th Jiangsu Sunda started trial polysilicon production of their phase one 1,500 metric ton polysilicon project. It is said that the produced polysilicon reached 99.9999999% purity.

And Sunda is preparing for the mass production now.

BYD Company invested in solar cell production in Shangluo, Shanxi province, China

BYD Company signed solar cell production and other project investment agreement with Shangluo City government on October 29th 2008. And first phase project investment is 2.5 billion CNY. BYD expects to produce solar cells and lithium battery materials worth RMB 2 billion through the completion of phase one, said the report.

BYD Company Limited (1211.HK) is an operator of IT parts and automotive businesses.