China's photovoltaic industry, ushered in a highlight moment. The IE Expo, a
global solar photovoltaic event, came to an end on June 16. As the largest and most influential professional solar energy exhibition in the world, IE Expo attracts a large number of global photovoltaic enterprises to participate in the exhibition every year.
This year's IE Expo has simply become the home of Chinese photovoltaic enterprises. The exhibition booths of Chinese enterprises and Chinese exhibitors can be seen everywhere. According to the official list of the exhibition, there are nearly 400 Chinese exhibitors, reaching one third of the total number of exhibitors.
It is worth mentioning that one of the highlights of Intersolar Europe each year is the announcement of the winners of the Intersolar Award. As one of the most authoritative and valuable awards in the photovoltaic industry, the Intersolar Award is evaluated by an independent review committee composed of industry experts to recognize the innovative and disruptive products and technologies of the year * in the photovoltaic industry. Two of
this year's three winners are from China: Huawei and Aixu, which won the award for their high-power string inverter and ABC battery and module technologies, respectively. The award-winning products come from two different photovoltaic fields, which shows that China's photovoltaic technology innovation capability has been in the forefront of the world.
However, there is an undercurrent behind the harmony between China and Europe.
As a former photovoltaic power, Europe is obviously unwilling to be left behind by Chinese photovoltaic enterprises. According to public reports, the German police directly took away Pu Yonghua, who was the director and deputy general manager of Runda Photovoltaic and is now the second largest shareholder of Jiangsu Greenpaul New Energy Co., Ltd. at the exhibition site. Many Chinese photovoltaic personages witnessed the German police "arresting people on the spot". As for the reasons behind, there is no clear statement, some media said that the long-standing triangular trade was suspected of violating relevant German laws and regulations.
Originally, the window for deepening cooperation between China and Europe in the photovoltaic market has become a "Hongmen banquet"?
For this reason, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association urgently refuted the rumor late at night, clarifying that the Chinese photovoltaic practitioners who were taken away from the German IE Expo only assisted in the investigation and have now returned to the hotel. After more than
three years of epidemic, the outstanding performance of Chinese photovoltaic enterprises at the IE Expo fully demonstrates that China's photovoltaic industry has reached the global level. The episode of "Chinese executives being taken away" reflects that China's photovoltaic industry has become so strong that Europe is afraid and frightened that it will not hesitate to use state power to restrict it.
While China's photovoltaic enterprises have become the focus in the international arena, the domestic market has also ushered in the climax since the development of the industry. In the first half of this year, a total of 31 photovoltaic enterprises from " have applied for IPO. A total of 86.7 billion yuan was raised. Among them, Atlas, Xinhongye, Ai Nengju and other three companies have been successfully listed, Shichuang Energy is about to be listed, while the remaining 27 companies are in the stage of IPO audit or listing guidance.
However, when things reach the extreme, they will turn around.
By sorting out these 31 enterprises, it is found that, except for a few enterprises representing the new technology of photovoltaic industry development, most enterprises mainly rely on the inertia of order growth, that is, through the high growth of photovoltaic industry sprint listing, which will probably repeat the tragedy of Baoding Yingli and Longji shares.
Gaojing Solar Energy is one of the typical cases of "short-term ripening".
Through research, it is found that Gaojing Solar Energy has broken through the previous growth logic of photovoltaic enterprises step by step, and has chosen a "short, flat and fast" development model in which capital is at the helm and photovoltaic bosses act as professional managers to manage the company. On the one hand, it relies on directors from VC to do internal transactions, on the other hand, it continuously raises funds to transfuse blood, aiming directly at listing.
In fact, a large proportion of Gaojing Solar's income comes from related transactions with Zhuhai Huafa Group and IDG capital-related enterprises, and it receives up to 2 billion government subsidies.
Another example of "short-term ripening" is Huayao Optoelectronics, which was founded in 2019.
Huayao Optoelectronics did not carry out actual operation in 2019, and its revenue was 0; its revenue in 2020 was only 1. The Xun family obviously planned to take the original team to "start a new business" in Huayao Optoelectronics.
Huayao Optoelectronics is mainly engaged in the production and sales of monocrystalline silicon rods and monocrystalline silicon wafers, which has not yet been separated from the former business of the Xun family. It is reasonable to speculate that the Xun family will change its industrial resources into birds. With the high control of the Xun family, the performance of Huayao Optoelectronics has undergone a qualitative change, with revenue increasing more than ten times in 2021 and doubling in 2022. After two years of rapid performance, Huayao Optoelectronics has also reached the GEM listing standard.
Gaojing Solar Energy and Huayao Optoelectronics are not an example, which shows that the capital of China's photovoltaic industry is so hot that it can achieve the "rapid ripening and listing" of the nature of the edge ball.
However, looking back on the development history of the industry, from scratch, from a weak follower to a strong leader, China's photovoltaic industry has come out of a difficult road of development in technology and market.
This paper attempts to restore the first two waves of China's photovoltaic industry since the beginning of the new century, as well as the gains and losses of star enterprises. In the 2010 World Cup in South Africa
13 years ago, the Chinese football team did not participate in it, but the Chinese elements were not absent. This World Cup ushered in an unprecedented * sponsorship by Chinese enterprises. It was also from this World Cup that Yili, Mengniu, vivo and other Chinese enterprises began to join the World Cup sponsorship team. This situation is created by Yingli Green Energy, a veteran enterprise in China's photovoltaic field from Baoding, Hebei Province. Moreover, Yingli continued to sponsor the 2014 World Cup.
However, the "Yingli myth" in the history of the World Cup did not continue in real business activities, and even the rapid decline of Yingli exceeded the expectations of the industry. By 2015, Yingli's share price had fallen from a high of $415 per share to only $25 per share. In 2018, Yingli was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Until now, bankruptcy reorganization is still in progress.
In fact, Yingli's fall from the peak to the bottom is the epitome of the elimination of the former photovoltaic "old kings" in more frequent technological changes than mobile phones and new energy vehicles.
In the past, the photovoltaic giants of the generation of * have ended up in a miserable situation:
in 2013, Wuxi Suntech, once the industry leader, filed for bankruptcy reorganization;
in 2016, LDK (Jiangxi LDK) went bankrupt and reorganized;
In 2019, China Power Electric filed for bankruptcy;
in 2019, Hanergy delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and in 2020, Hanergy filed for bankruptcy liquidation. After more than two years of coordination, it was still unable to reorganize successfully, but it had no choice but to go to the situation of centralized bankruptcy liquidation; Himin Solar,
once a global manufacturer of solar water heaters, is already heavily indebted and nearly bankrupt.
Looking back on the development history of China's photovoltaic industry for more than 20 years, it is essentially a road map of technological development and change. The photovoltaic "upstart" who beat the front wave to death on the beach is the representative of the new generation of technology.
Once upon a time, China's photovoltaic industry was still a follower of Europe, America and Japan. The explosion of the world photovoltaic industry began in 2004. Under the dual pressure of environmental protection and energy security, Germany, Switzerland and other European countries and the United States have introduced photovoltaic industry support policies. More than half of Europe and the United States support photovoltaic development at a price 10 times higher than average electricity price. In that year alone, the demand of the global photovoltaic market doubled year on year. China has also followed the promulgation of the Renewable Energy Law of the People's Republic of China in 2006, which marks that China's photovoltaic industry has entered the fast lane of development.
In the first decade of China's photovoltaic development, the most frequently mentioned is the dilemma of "three heads outside", that is, the source of core raw materials, market and core technology are heavily dependent on foreign countries. At the
technical level, taking the upstream core raw materials as an example, the upstream polysilicon production technology is monopolized by the United States, Japan and Germany, and Chinese photovoltaic enterprises can only enter the component sector with lower technical threshold and export to the European and American markets by taking advantage of the low labor cost. Due to the lack of bargaining power upstream, Chinese photovoltaic enterprises led by Suntech in Wuxi generally choose to sign long-term agreements with overseas suppliers to ensure the supply of raw materials while avoiding the risk of rising raw material prices. With the outbreak of the global financial crisis
in 2008, the demand for photovoltaic in Europe and the United States dropped sharply, and the price of polysilicon fell off a cliff, which caused heavy losses to Chinese photovoltaic enterprises that had previously locked in high raw material prices through agreements. At the same time, the decline in demand has also caused photovoltaic exports to shrink, and a large number of Chinese enterprises unable to withstand the roller-coaster changes in polysilicon prices have withdrawn from the market.
Having experienced the crisis of price fluctuation of silicon materials, China's photovoltaic industry has learned a lesson from the bitter experience and started a technological transformation: through self-research and self-production and the introduction and improvement of foreign technology, it has broken the technological monopoly of the United States, Japan and Germany, and got rid of the situation that polysilicon materials have been controlled by others for many years. To this day, China is still the origin of silicon materials in the world.
The representative event is that in 2009, GCL-Poly independently developed the cold hydrogenation process and built the earliest and large-scale polysilicon production line in China, thus breaking the monopoly of Europe, America and Japan. During the * period, GCL-Poly also beat Wacker, the dominant silicon company in the overseas market at that time, to occupy 1/4 of the global market share and become a global polysilicon producer. Polysilicon enterprises such as GCL-Poly, LDK and China Metallurgical Group have expanded their production
as the technology of domestic silicon material production continues to mature and policy incentives are added. By 2013, China's polysilicon production accounted for about 40% of the world's total production. Meanwhile, about 51% of polysilicon photovoltaic modules in Europe and 86% in the United States are produced in China.
However, a huge technological change from polycrystalline silicon to monocrystalline silicon is slowly brewing.
At that time, the consensus of the photovoltaic industry was that the physical structure of monocrystalline silicon was superior to that of polycrystalline silicon. However, due to the high cost of silicon materials and crystal pulling process for monocrystalline silicon production, "expensive" became a stumbling block to the development of monocrystalline silicon. While enterprises
across the country are pouring into the polysilicon track crazily, another enterprise, Longji Green Energy, which has been dormant for many years, has begun to rise gradually by betting on the new technology track of monocrystalline silicon. Longji founder Li Zhenguo led a team to investigate all photovoltaic technologies on the market, and finally judged that monocrystalline silicon would be the future * technology route, and carried out a decade of exploration and research and development in this field.
Longji Green Energy mainly relies on three innovations to become a wave of "upstarts" on the photovoltaic track: *, the silicon material link has broken through the technology of multiple loading and crystal pulling, limiting the cost of monocrystalline silicon to the same level as that of polycrystalline silicon; Second, in the silicon wafer sector, the company broke through the diamond wire cutting technology monopolized by Japan for many years in 2012, significantly reducing the cost of single silicon and improving the production capacity, and after 2015, the diamond wire cutting technology became the standard of the photovoltaic industry; third, through the acquisition of Le Ye Photovoltaic, the company extended to the midstream cell and module sectors, and adopted the advanced PERC technology route in the cell sector.
With breakthroughs in many technical fields, the cost of Longji monocrystalline silicon wafers has dropped rapidly and the production capacity has increased significantly, gradually occupying an advantage in the competition with polycrystalline silicon, leading the industry from polycrystalline silicon to monocrystalline silicon. By the end of 2019, Longji's monocrystalline silicon production capacity and shipments have surpassed polysilicon in an all-round way, reaching 42GW, surpassing Xiexin, becoming the double leader of silicon wafers and modules, rewriting the pattern of the photovoltaic industry and becoming a new generation leader in the photovoltaic industry.
With the success of Longji Green Energy's technology gamble, the competition between monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon has gradually come to an end, and the competition in the field of silicon wafers has begun to turn to the competition of size.
This has to mention Central, which goes hand in hand with Longji. It was in 2015 that Longji and Zhonghuan joined hands to customize the side length 156.
After that, Longji and Zhonghuan parted ways and began to choose different size routes and formed their respective strategic alliances. In 2020, Longji, together with seven domestic photovoltaic enterprises such as Jingke and Jingao, proposed to establish a silicon wafer standard (M10) with a geometric size of 182 mm * 182 mm, and to incorporate this size into the standard specification document in the industry standard organization. Then, 39 enterprises covering the whole industry chain of upstream, midstream and downstream, such as Zhonghuan, Risheng and Tianhe, announced the formation of "600 W + Photovoltaic Open Innovation Ecological Alliance", advocating the technology path with 210 mm silicon wafer (G12) as the core.
Although Longji controls the mainstream size standard of silicon wafers with strong industry influence, the decline has been obvious.
At present, 182mm led by Longji has become the mainstream silicon wafer size in China's photovoltaic market, with a market share of more than 50%. However, there are many views in the market that the 210 mm large silicon wafer dominated by Zhonghuan has more market prospects and will become the mainstream size of silicon wafers in the future. China Photovoltaic Industry Association predicts that by 2030, 210 mm silicon wafers are expected to occupy 70% of the market share. The irreversible trend
of large-size silicon wafers has gradually become the consensus of the industry. After Li Dongsheng's TCL Group took over, the second Central has received strong financial support and is expected to become the "new king" challenging the status of the first Longji in terms of silicon wafer size technology innovation.
Unlike the previous two waves of technological changes in the photovoltaic industry, the new wave of technological route disputes has also spread from upstream silicon wafers to the middle and lower reaches, bearing the brunt of the great changes in the technological route of photovoltaic cells.
Photovoltaic cells have experienced tremendous technological changes in the industry in recent years. In 2019, with PERC battery (commonly known as P-type battery) technology replacing BSF battery technology, major domestic and foreign battery manufacturers have turned to PERC batteries, and Chinese photovoltaic battery manufacturers represented by Tongwei, Aixu and Runyang have turned to large-size battery technology. There is not much disagreement in this round of technology substitution.
However, in the past three years alone, the battery industry has reached a crossroads and is in the process of technological change from P-type to N-type batteries. N-type batteries are divided into TOPCon, IBC and HJT, and several leading batteries have begun to bet on different fields.
Among them, the leading Tongwei is rich and powerful, with strong technical reserves, and chooses to make efforts in both HJT and TOPCon; Runyang shares also rely on a variety of technical reserves, while expanding the capacity of TOPCon batteries, it is also expanding the capacity of HJT; Zhongrun Solar Energy and Junda shares are betting on the TOPCon technology route; Aixu shares are unique, All in ABC technology (this technology won the prize at this IE Expo).
In addition to batteries, the technical competition of the inverter track, which connects the core components in the middle and lower reaches, is also extremely fierce, and has undergone several technical shuffles. For a long time, the technical route of centralized (commonly known as "big machine") and string (commonly known as "small machine") has been discussed in the field of photovoltaic inverters. Before
2011, China's photovoltaic inverters were also "stuck" by European and American countries, Emerson, SMA, SIEMENS, Schneider, ABB and other overseas brands almost divided up the market share. In 2011, thanks to policy support, the considerable profit margin of inverters attracted domestic inverter enterprises to emerge like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. In just over a year, the number of photovoltaic inverter enterprises in China has surged to more than 140. With the advent of the Warring States era of inverters, overseas brands without price advantages gradually withdrew from the domestic market under the fierce price war.
Inverter localization route starts from centralized, limited by cost factors, the standard configuration of ground photovoltaic power station is large centralized inverter, and domestic large machine enterprises represented by sunshine power supply have a greater voice in the market. There are also many challengers in the field of
small machines, and Huawei, the communications giant, has focused on string inverters. Led by Huawei, string inverters began to gradually squeeze into the ground power station market. Moreover, since 2016, distributed photovoltaic has begun to erupt, which promotes the rapid increase of the scale of more suitable string inverters, and the market share of small machines has been increasing. In the global PV inverter market ranking released by IHS Markit, a research Institute, Huawei has been on the list * from 2015 to 2020.
However, the dispute over the technical route of large and small machines is far from settled. In an attempt to break down the barriers, the veteran technology school Sunshine Power launched the "1 + X" modular inverter in 2021, claiming that it is independent of string and centralized inverters and can meet the multi-scenario applications of distributed and ground power stations. In the IHS Markit Global PV Inverter Market Ranking, Sunshine Power also surpassed Huawei and returned to the world *.
With the continuous technological research and development of many Chinese enterprises, the technical route of inverters will become more and more blurred in the future. The selection of inverters is no longer a "life-and-death" between large and small machines, but a gradual transition to the industry's general rule of "adapting to local conditions" to meet the needs of different application scenarios. Behind it is the contribution of Chinese inverter pioneers such as Sunshine Power, Huawei and Jinlang Technologies to break the monopoly of Europe and the United States and lead the technological progress of the industry.
In the field of photovoltaic auxiliary materials, there are also changes and changes in technical routes, among which photovoltaic brackets are the most typical.
Photovoltaic brackets are mainly divided into fixed brackets and tracking brackets, both of which have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the application scenarios are different. At present, domestic enterprises mainly produce fixed brackets. Compared with the overseas photovoltaic bracket market, the overall penetration rate of tracking brackets in China is obviously low. According to the data of China Photovoltaic Industry Association, in 2016, the market penetration rate of photovoltaic tracking bracket in China was only 5.0%, and in 2020, the market penetration rate increased to 18.
The tracking bracket industry in European and American countries started early, with mature technology, and has gained high recognition in the downstream, while the construction of large domestic bases and other projects has been accelerated. It also brings a broad market for the application of tracking brackets, and tracking brackets are expected to accelerate penetration.
The tracking bracket belongs to the low localization rate of photovoltaic industry chain, and the global share of leading enterprises CITIC Bo and Tianhe is only about 12%. In the past two years, CITIC Bo's tracking bracket revenue has accounted for 1/3 of the total revenue of photovoltaic bracket, which is expected to become the leading enterprise of photovoltaic tracking bracket in China.
After 20 years of development and technological changes, China's photovoltaic industry has developed the most mature photovoltaic technology and the most complete photovoltaic industry chain in the world.
Since 2015, the output of Chinese enterprises in the four core links of the photovoltaic industry chain-polysilicon, silicon wafers, cells and modules-has ranked among the world's *.
In terms of special equipment for production lines, from silicon material production, silicon wafer processing, battery production, component production to testing equipment and simulators related to photovoltaic industry chain, all have complete supply capacity, and some products have even been exported to varying degrees. Nowadays, photovoltaic has become the new "business card" of Chinese manufacturing, technology is in the position of * * in the world, and more than 80% of the world's photovoltaic production capacity is in the hands of Chinese enterprises.
In the first ten years of China's photovoltaic industry, in addition to the core raw materials and technology being controlled by others, another major factor lagging behind Europe and the United States comes from the market, that is, the industry relies heavily on exports.
In 2011, the hidden mine finally exploded. In December 2011, the Ministry of Commerce of the United States launched an "anti-dumping and anti-subsidy" investigation into Chinese photovoltaic products, and a year later, Europe officially launched a well-known "double-anti" investigation into China's photovoltaic products industry. The power of "
double reverse" is enormous, and the export commodities of Chinese photovoltaic enterprises will be levied a high double reverse tax of 23% to 254%. In the second year, China's exports of photovoltaic products to the United States fell by nearly 50% and to Europe by 71%, which led to widespread losses in the industry and bankruptcy of more than 350 enterprises.
After the export suffered a heavy blow, the problem of excessive dependence on external demand in the photovoltaic industry began to attract the attention of the state. To this end, since 2013, the Chinese government has launched a series of rescue policies to boost domestic market demand and save China's photovoltaic industry in distress, including subsidizing the domestic distributed photovoltaic power generation industry and supporting the development of the industry with real gold and silver; the policy has shifted the focus of development to expanding the domestic market and improving the technical level.
In the next two years, photovoltaic manufacturing enterprises eager to break through poured into the west and expanded to the downstream of the industrial chain. Facilities such as distributed photovoltaic and ground photovoltaic power stations have sprung up. The industrial chain, which
had been seriously damaged by the "double reverse", has also won a rebirth. Turning to the domestic market is the real beginning of the rapid growth of China's photovoltaic industry.
In 2022, China added 87.41 GW of photovoltaic grid-connected installed capacity, and the cumulative photovoltaic grid-connected installed capacity reached 392.
Ten years ago, in 2013, China's photovoltaic installed capacity was only 15.
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