PV companies need to tap the domestic market for development

Almost simultaneously with China’s announcement of a reduction in the gold solar project subsidy standards, several countries in Europe have also announced plans for a reduction in PV subsidies.

“The government’s PV subsidies are the key supporting forces for PV companies to survive.” Xiao Han, a research fellow at China Investment Advisor New Energy Industry Group, believes that the photovoltaic industry in many countries, including Germany, has been able to achieve rapid development, both with the government’s photovoltaic industry. Subsidy policy is inseparable. As the government gradually reduces the subsidies for the photovoltaic industry, the profitability of the photovoltaic companies will decline, which is obviously detrimental to the development of the photovoltaic industry.

As we all know, the European market is the world's largest photovoltaic market. Most of China's PV modules are exported to Europe. Therefore, changes in the European PV market policy and changes in demand directly affect the production and operation of domestic PV module manufacturers.

At the same time, U.S. photovoltaic companies applied for a "double counter" investigation on China's PV modules exported to the United States. This led to the outbreak of a Sino-U.S. photovoltaic trade war. China's PV companies have been prevented from entering the United States. The deterioration of the international and domestic markets has led domestic PV companies to fall into the low point of industrial development.

However, in the second half of 2011, after the photovoltaic industry suffered a "winter", China has successively introduced a series of policy measures to continuously increase the demand for photovoltaics in the domestic market, prompting photovoltaic companies to pay more attention to the domestic market.

Meng Xianji, deputy director of the China Renewable Energy Society, said that domestic PV companies cannot always rely on the international market and must pay more attention to the development of the domestic market.

In order to increase the domestic market's guidance for the demand for solar power generation from policies, China has for the first time incorporated solar energy into its energy development plan this year and has set specific targets for 3 GW.

The survey report released recently by the Swiss bank Sarasin is also optimistic about the solar energy demand in the Chinese domestic market. The report pointed out that the European solar market will shrink by 5% annually between 2011 and 2015, but due to the development of emerging photovoltaic markets such as China, the global PV market demand will still increase by 20% this year, between 2010 and 2015, the global photovoltaic industry The annual growth rate of the market will reach 18%.

Galaxy Securities analyst Zou Xuyuan said that the governments of European countries have announced plans to cut PV subsidies in succession, but the bidding for domestic PV power plants and power generation systems is hot, and the situation of photovoltaic “outside cold and internal heat” is obvious. The “Notice on Doing a Good Job of Demonstrating the Golden Sun in 2012” jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Energy Administration formally opened the fourth phase of the “Golden Sun” roof project, highlighting this trend.

According to sources, more than 100 solar energy companies in China have been brewing and returning to work after seeing prices fall to the bottom.

According to industry sources, the photovoltaic industry should start its domestic demand market and should focus on breakthroughs in two areas.

The first is the self-built photovoltaic power station. From the perspective of the photovoltaic industry chain, the power station is still the highest investment return rate of the photovoltaic industry chain, and the downstream power station can become a source of future stable cash flow for photovoltaic enterprises in the case of policy support.

The second is solar energy building integration. Solar building integration has the characteristics of not occupying additional land resources, reducing power transmission investment and transmission losses in situ. At the same time, the peak of PV system power generation coincides with the peak of building power consumption, which can ease the power shortage and is a good direction for the development of distributed energy.

Meng Xianji believes that if Chinese PV companies want to continue to develop, they must change their strategies and methods. The original domestic photovoltaic companies rely on cheap labor and resource advantages in the international market, this road has now come to an end. In 2012, China's photovoltaic industry has to go through 'winter', and it is necessary to get rid of the embarrassing situation of photovoltaic raw materials and products “two ends out”, innovative technologies to reduce the production costs of polysilicon, and vigorously tap the domestic market to absorb and digest rapid growth in production capacity.

Zhang Hao, an analyst of Haitong Securities's power equipment and new energy industry, believes that the short-term fundamentals of the entire photovoltaic industry have not improved, and the downturn trend will continue without large trend opportunities.

Some people in the industry also stated that China's photovoltaic industry is facing a “shuffle”, photovoltaic companies with capital and technological advantages will continue to promote technology research and development and scale production along the route of reducing costs; and the backward production capacity represented by many small and medium-sized enterprises will be Eliminated and eventually contributed to the transformation and upgrading of China's photovoltaic industry and benign development.