Polysilicon is a form of elemental silicon. When molten elemental silicon solidifies under supercooled conditions, the silicon atoms are arranged in a diamond lattice form into a plurality of crystal nuclei. If the crystal nuclei grow into crystal grains with different crystal orientations, the crystal grains are combined and crystallized into polycrystalline silicon. . From the current development process of international solar cells, it can be seen that the development trend is monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, thin film materials (including microcrystalline silicon-based films, compound-based films and dye films). With the turbulent and ups and downs of the photovoltaic industry, the market for polysilicon has also undergone tremendous changes.
Market size: production capacity stagnates
From 2007 to 2014, China's polysilicon production also increased rapidly, reaching an annual production capacity of 160,000 tons from hundreds of tons per year. The reason for the rapid expansion of polysilicon production capacity is mainly due to the surge in international polysilicon prices caused by the surge in demand in the photovoltaic industry in 2008. As of 2013, 60 companies in China have been engaged in polysilicon production, with a production scale of 70,000 tons/year and a construction scale of 160,000 tons. In the same year, domestic production reached 70,000 tons, but the demand exceeded 180,000 tons, imports reached 110,000 tons, and imports amounted to nearly 60%.
It is worth noting that since 2013, China's polysilicon production capacity has not increased. This is because the previously increased production capacity is based on the high price of the market, but when the price of polysilicon fell below 200,000 yuan / ton, most of the factories were stopped due to losses, and the new capacity was difficult due to cost. Below the market price, no one dares to invest again, so the capacity has not increased in three years.
Polysilicon production capacity: excess or insufficient?
Whether in the government departments such as the National Development and Reform Commission, the investment community, or the photovoltaic industry, the general perception of China's polysilicon market is overcapacity. However, from 2008 until today, the only constant trend in China's polysilicon market is that more than 50% of China's polysilicon market demand is dependent on imports each year. The polysilicon link is also the only one in China's PV industry chain that needs to be imported. In a market with overcapacity, more than half of the quantities need to be imported each year, and this seemingly contradictory phenomenon has lasted for five years in China. What is going on here?
At present, although the domestic polysilicon production capacity claims to have 180,000 tons, most of the manufacturers have a cost of more than 200,000 yuan/ton. Only a few of the costs such as Jiangsu Zhongneng, Yongxiang and Special Variety can be controlled at 12~150,000. Between yuan / ton, under the spot price can barely produce, and some of them rely on downstream ingots and slicing to make up for the losses of the upstream polysilicon link. If the production capacity that can be produced at the current price is called effective production capacity, in 2014, the effective production capacity of China's polysilicon is only 80,000 tons, accounting for only 40% of China's polysilicon demand, and the amount of imported polysilicon accounts for 57. %. The remaining 100,000 tons of capacity has become ineffective, and many polysilicon plants have been permanently scrapped and dismantled. This is why China's polysilicon market will be in the "overcapacity", but there are more than half of the demand for imports can be resolved.
According to the latest data of China's polysilicon market in 2015, domestic polysilicon manufacturers only produced about 74,000 tons of polysilicon in 2015, which is the same as the 2015 data. At the same time, however, the domestic PV module production in 2015 increased by about 16% compared with the previous year. The increase in components must represent an increase in the amount of polysilicon. Therefore, the incremental portion of the demand for polysilicon in 2015 is all imported polysilicon. fulfilled.
Since all current polysilicon production processes in China are either Siemens or modified Siemens, the process cost has been gradually stabilized after the process costs of cold hydrogenation, chlorination and pressure reduction, although many plants have begun to use FBR. That is, the fluidized bed process, but the expected decline in production capacity is still limited, and it is difficult to compete with the cost of international manufacturers. Therefore, in the next few years, the amount of effective capacity of China's polysilicon will continue to depend on the market price of polysilicon.
Market price: like a roller coaster, but it is getting stable
In terms of polysilicon prices, the financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 caused polysilicon prices to plummet from a high of 3 million tons per ton to 400,000 yuan. Then, with the rapid recovery of the photovoltaic market, prices rose rapidly after 2009, and in 2011, The price rebounded to 700,000 yuan / ton. In 2012, due to the rapid increase in demand in the photovoltaic market, despite the sharp increase in China's production capacity, due to the double-reverse of European and American PV to China, the growth rate of the PV market declined, resulting in the lowest price of polysilicon market down to RMB 120,000/ton. This price is lower than the cost of all domestic manufacturers. Therefore, it has to stop production and watch the foreign polysilicon imports, eroding the rapidly growing polysilicon market in China. In 2012, 90% of China's polysilicon was discontinued due to lower market prices, and this situation continued until 2013.
By the beginning of 2014, as the market recovered, the price of polysilicon rose to 15~170,000/ton, but only three or four factories in China, such as GCL-Poly, Xinjiang TBEA, and Sichuan Yongxiang, could maintain at such prices. Loss, therefore, due to the repeated import of polysilicon, the impact on the domestic market is still large, so the price fell again in the second half of 2014, this decline continued until the end of 2015, the price of polysilicon is low at 10~120,000/ton Price. If such a price continues for a while, it is foreseeable that more effective capacity in China's polysilicon production capacity will permanently become ineffective capacity.
Why is polysilicon price lower than domestic?
The reason for the low price of the domestic polysilicon market is the price shock of foreign manufacturers. At present, the largest importer of Chinese products is South Korea's OCI, whose import price was as low as 100,000 yuan/ton, and the prices of other European and American manufacturers were slightly higher, about 11,000 to 130,000 yuan/ton. In China, only Jiangsu Zhongneng's process cost is close to the cost of international manufacturers, while the cost of companies such as TBEA mainly depends on Xinjiang's low coal price and self-sufficient power plant generation, rather than the result of process optimization. There are two main reasons why international manufacturers are lower than domestic manufacturers. First, international manufacturers such as Wacker, Mitsubishi Chemical, Deshan, HEMLOCK, REC and Korea's OCI are all on the basis of the original chemical plant. Since the main process distillation and reduction of Siemens is also a chemical process, one of the biggest advantages of building a Siemens process polysilicon plant in a chemical plant is whether it is hydrogen chloride or hydrogen, or silicon tetrachloride or dichlorodihydrosilane. By-products can be recycled in their chemical plants, so process consumption can be minimized and process costs can be minimized.
Unfortunately, domestic polysilicon manufacturers, whether it is the early Shin Kong, China Silicon, or later Zhongneng, Yongxiang, and special changes, have nothing to do with the chemical plant, and some are the electronics factory to build polysilicon plants, Most of them are flat buildings and high-rise buildings. They are completely cross-border and start from zero. Therefore, there is a congenital gap with foreign manufacturers in the degree of process cycle. Although the cost of labor and electricity in China is not much different from that in Europe and America, the cost of the process is much higher.
Secondly, the Siemens process polysilicon process has been in existence for more than 50 years. Most foreign manufacturers have been building factories for more than 30 years. Therefore, the process has been repeatedly optimized and improved. Therefore, all aspects of the production process are running optimally. Under conditions. The earliest new light in the domestic factory has only been in less than eight years, and the middle is still intermittent production. Many manufacturers say that production can be normal, even thank God, it is impossible to talk about optimization, it is hard to say improvement, individual factories even There is a phenomenon of running a drip. At present, among the domestic polysilicon manufacturers, the improvement of the Siemens method is only effective in Jiangsu Zhongneng. If the fluidized bed process can be put into operation smoothly, and the self-provided power plant is activated, the cost is expected to drop to 100,000 yuan. Below, it is close to the international manufacturer's cost. Since the Siemens law is an exotic process, it will be very difficult for domestic manufacturers to achieve a foreign transcendence within the framework of the process. This is why the cost of polysilicon manufacturers in China is higher than that of international manufacturers.
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