The solAr indusTry’s MonThly MArkeT MoniTor Volume 29, Number 10, October 2010 The Industry’s Oldest Newsletter | Published by Greentech Media SEIA/GTM Research Quarterly SuRvEy Results; PEnnSylvAnia MAkes A Big Leap In ThE uS Pv Market Also in This issue Until this year, Pennsylvania has lagged behind its neighbors, New York and New Jersey, in total solar PV installations. Crystalline Silicon PV - Looking In the first half of 2010, however, the size of the state, Pennsylvania is forward to 2011 Pennsylvania has more than doubled poised to become one of the largest page 3 its combined 2008 and 2009 markets in the region. installed capacities and has even SunEdison The SREC program in Pennsylvania is inched ahead of New York. The Awarded 16.7MW still in the early stages of development, reason New Jersey’s solar market of Solar Projects has consistently been one of the but the state’s Alternative Energy page 14 strongest in the country can be Portfolio Standard (AEPS) requires an increasing amount of the energy sold attributed to its State Renewable Sulfurcell Unveils to customers come from renewable Energy Credit (SREC) market. CIGS Cell With sources. In order for energy retailers Pennsylvania has a similar system in 10.7% Efficiency place, though it is less well defined. (namely PPL and PECO, which control With solar requirements ramping up over 50% of the market) to adhere to page 17 in the near future, and considering continued on page 20... Chinese Wafer Makers GCL- Poly and Comtec Accrue Orders in Excess of 600MW page 18 California’s Proposed Feed- In-Tariff Tracker page 19 PV News Feed- In-Tariff Tracker page 22 1 leTTer froM The ediTor This month, we relaunch PV News, now in its 30th year of publication. PV News, the most analytical, independent, and enthusiastic written record of the PV industry in the world, will retain its name, but upgrade its motto to reflect a new mission: “Monthly Market Monitor of the PV Industry.” When Paul Maycock of Photovoltaic Energy Systems launched PV News in September 1981 as a “monthly report of pertinent, valuable, factual data of the PV industry,” he began a tradition of reporting and analysis that Scott Clavenna was singularly his own, and built a remarkably loyal following over the next 28 years. In this relaunch, editor-in-Chief we intend to build on that legacy, and continue the tradition of advertising independence and detailed Oka Tai-Lee market analysis with our team here at Greentech Media and GTM Research. Production editor You’ll see more market research than in the past, and more incisive news-gathering. In addition, we’re Andrew Krulewitz adding two new features to PV News that will appear in each issue: North American and European Assistant editor Feed-In Tariff trackers, and a Utility Project Tracker. These will provide readers a monthly update on two Kristine LaRocca of the most important areas of the PV market today: public support for PV and utility-scale PV projects. Graphic designer We’ll also be adding special reports from our team of analysts, as well as pulling data from ongoing research projects that are underway here at GTM Research. Michelle Vessel Copy editor An important development for us at GTM Research was our recent selection by the Solar Energy Industries Paul Maycock Association (SEIA) to be the official data collection and analysis firm for the U.S. solar market. Our work editor emeritus, in this area is underway, and we’ll be releasing quarterly reports with SEIA on the state of the U.S. PV, Contributing writer solar heating and cooling, and CSP production and demand markets and a five-year rolling demand forecast. PV News subscribers will benefit from this work as we highlight unique findings from the data Publishers collection process and highlight pockets of growth or rapid change among the states in the U.S. Greentech Media, Inc. 1132 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02138 We welcome your feedback on our new look and content, and appreciate your continued support of this esteemed newsletter. e:[email protected] w:www.greentechmedia.com General inquiries PV news in hisTory Greentech Media welcomes all contact about any topics related to 10 Years AgO iN PVNews HistOrY | SOLAR WOrLD PUrCHases BaYER SOLar sustainable development and solar energy. We strive to provide top- SolarWorld has purchased an 82% share of Bayer Solar, the cast-ingot poly silicon wafer supplier. Bayer quality data and analysis relating to AG will retain an 18% stake in Bayer Solar. SolarWorld’s Executive Board Chairman, Frank H. Asbeck, sustainable technologies. Please said their decision to acquire Bayer Solar was based on the company’s solid management and a desire feel free to contact us at the address above with comments or to keep wafer production in Germany. Bayer Solar was Germany’s only silicon wafer manufacturer, with suggestions for improvement. a world market share of 20 percent (this would be wafers supporting over 40 MW of PV cells). More than 30% of Bayer Solar’s production goes to Japan. sources As an open source publication, we 25 Years agO iN PVNews HistOrY | JaPaNese PUsH FOr siLiCON iNDePeNDeNCe would be pleased to share sources for the facts and figures used in PVNews. Japan is enlarging both its silicon refining and cell production base, with the following industrial Contact us with any requests. developments reported: 1) Toyo Soda Industry has a joint venture with Siltechs (USA). Reportedly, they have bought 80% of Siltech’s stock and will manufacture wafers this year. 2) Tokuyama Soda, Copyright © 2009 Greentech Media which has been manufacturing 200 tonnes annually of polycrystal silicon, has increased its capacity All rights reserved. to 1,000 tonnes per year. 3) Kawasaki Seitetsu has bought 25% of the stock of NBK of Silicon Valley, California for 1.8 billion yen. The company is expected to manufacture silicon cells. 4) Nippon Steel ISSN 0739-4829 has established a new company, Nittetsu Electron, which will start manufacturing single crystal solar cells in June, 1986. 5) Niho Kokan has bought the manufacturing technology of polycrystal silicon from General Electric and will start manufacturing polycrystal silicon next year. The company plans to purchase silica and refine it to high-purity polycrystal silicon 2 sPeCiAl rePorT cRystallInE SIlIcon Pv - lookInG foRwARd To 2011 An ExcERPT fRoM ThE nEw GTM RESEARch REPort ‘Pv PRoducTIon, TEchnoloGy, And coST foREcAST’ BY sHYam meHta On the surface, 2009 was also was another record-breaking year for the industry, with over 7 GW of modules installed, total module production of 8.95 GW, and cell production of 10.66 GW – a 51% increase over 2008 cell production of 7.05 GW (itself an 88% increase over 2007). Still, as shown in Figure 1, growth in supply easily exceeded that in demand on the whole. Installations increased by only 24% last year after growing at close to 50% for the better part of last decade, while capacity expansions that were set into place in 2008 resulted in available module supply in 2009 being almost twice that of demand. However, as discussed below, a large percentage of this capacity was not bankable, which helped to insulate the rest of the market from a prolonged period of overcapacity. FigUre 1: Global PV Supply vs. Demand, 2007-2009 The high-level results in Figure 1 mask the fact that 2009 was one of the most challenging years for PV suppliers in recent memory. The credit crisis, the global recession, the evaporation of demand in Spain (the largest PV market in 2008), and a harsh German winter led to a severe slump in installations in late 2008 and early 2009, and the consequent overcapacity and inventory build led to sharp price declines all across the value chain. However, the situation took a turn for the better in the second half of 2009, as the German market rebounded strongly, aided by looming policy uncertainty in 2010 and the return of project financing in the second half of 2009. As a result of being forced to idle most of their capacity at the beginning of the year, top-tier manufacturers found themselves sold out in the last quarter of the year, during which an unprecedented 2.4 GW was installed in Germany alone. With project economics still working in their favor and established low-cost players (First Solar, Suntech, Yingli, Trina) being capacity constrained, even high-cost manufacturers saw strong demand. The robust demand environment (fueled primarily by the German market) has continued well into 2010 thus far. As shown in Figure 2, eight cell producers alone shipped over 1.9 GW in the Q2 2010 -- three times what was shipped in Q1 2009. Most bankable producers are sold out for the rest of the year, and consequently, prices, which had been in free-fall for much of 2009, have stabilized across the value chain, actually experiencing a 5% to 10% increase in the second and third quarters of 2010. 3 FigUre 2: QUarterly Cell ShiPmeNts, SeLeCted Producers,Q3 2008 - Q2 2010 technology trends Crystalline silicon cell production in 2009 was 8.02 GW, a 42% increase over 2008. As discussed below, the majority of these cells were manufactured in the low-cost locations of China and Taiwan. Total c-Si module production in 2009 was 6.3 GW. Overall, crystalline silicon still dominated the PV technology landscape, with a cell production share of 81% and a module production share of 78%: for cells, this breaks into a 75% share for “plain vanilla” mono- and multi- crystalline cells, and a 6% share for high-efficiency “super” mono-crystalline cells made by SunPower and Sanyo.