In recent years, disorderly competition and low price involution in the photovoltaic industry have caused serious harm to the development of enterprises, industry ecology and the interests of end-users. With the opportunity of the official release of the General Principles of Cost Accounting Model for Photovoltaic Industry, I stand in the perspective of industry development to sort out the triple hazards brought by vicious competition at low prices, as well as the landing of new standards, how to help us solve these industry problems.
First, hurt the enterprise: dumping at a low price causes the industry to fall into a total loss, endangering the sustainable development
of the enterprise. Photovoltaic manufacturing is a heavy asset industry with large investment in fixed assets, high depreciation of equipment and high operating costs. If the enterprise wants to operate well and develop for a long time, it must have reasonable profits to support it. This kind of bottomless low-price competition, the harm to enterprises is serious, long-term loss-making sales, continuous consumption of enterprises'own funds, more and more operational risks, enterprises are in a long-term "blood loss" state. In order to survive, some enterprises reduce costs by purchasing low-cost and low-quality raw materials, lowering quality standards, reducing R & D investment, and stealing other people's intellectual property rights, which directly leads to the decline of product quality. Although those leading enterprises focusing on technological innovation insist on R & D investment to ensure product quality, they are forced to fall into the whirlpool of low-price competition, and also fall into a serious loss situation in the low-price competition, resulting in a comprehensive loss of the industry, which is a tragedy for China's photovoltaic industry, which is in the leading position in the world.
Now the group standard of "General Principles of Cost Accounting Model for Photovoltaic Industry" has landed, which has a clear basis for judging low-price dumping, and enterprises dare to resist low-price loss-making sales, which can effectively maintain the reasonable profit space of enterprises, thoroughly change the abnormal situation of low-quality enterprises stirring up the situation and high-quality enterprises suffering losses, and guide people to say goodbye to extensive. Guide enterprises to do quality, technology and reputation steadfastly, and keep the foundation of long-term development of enterprises.
At present, the whole photovoltaic industry chain has fallen into a serious low-price involution. From upstream raw materials, to midstream manufacturing, and then to terminal applications, the profits of all links have been squeezed to the extreme, and many links have suffered overall losses. The direct consequence of profit exhaustion is the exhaustion of innovation momentum. Many small and medium-sized enterprises have suspended research projects, and their technical teams have been reduced or even disbanded; although the leading enterprises have gritted their teeth to maintain research and development, they have to compress long-term exploratory topics and turn to pursue short-term cost-reducing micro-innovation, and the industry as a whole has fallen into the dilemma of "low-end involution, high-end stall". In the long run, the industry will lose the strength to lead the global technology route and miss the window period of the next round of energy technology revolution. The introduction of
this set of cost accounting standards, through a transparent cost disclosure mechanism, forces inefficient production capacity to accelerate clearance, and guides prices to return to a reasonable range.
Third, harm the interests of users: the appearance of low price covers up the hidden dangers of quality, and the long-term safety risks are ultimately borne
by the end users. In the uproar of price war, the end users are often attracted by the publicity of " low component price" and "low cost of electricity". They mistakenly think that low price is affordable. However, photovoltaic power plants are long-term assets for 25 or even 30 years, and their life-cycle power generation, reliability and operation and maintenance costs are far more important than initial purchase price. The consequences of low-price competition will eventually be passed on to users without exception.
At the same time, low-price involution makes the vast majority of small and medium-sized enterprises unable to establish an after-sales operation and maintenance network covering the whole country and even the whole world. Normal quality assurance services should include a series of work such as regular inspection, but some loss-making enterprises can only reduce their service teams, shorten the quality assurance period, and even exclude their own responsibilities with "standard contracts". Users seem to save the initial investment, but they may pay several times the maintenance fee, replacement fee and power generation loss fee in the following years, which can be described as "greedy for small advantages and big losses". Especially after the bankruptcy of some small and medium-sized component suppliers, the commitment of product quality assurance and after-sales service is a dead letter, and finally it is borne by the end users themselves.
The General Principles of Cost Accounting Model for Photovoltaic Industry solves this dilemma from the source. When the industry has a reasonable profit margin, enterprises have the financial resources to adopt high-quality raw materials, strictly implement IEC testing standards, build a digital quality traceability system, and set up a professional operation and maintenance team. The cost bottom line established by the standard naturally filters out those inferior products that rely on jerry-building to survive, and ensures that the components entering the market meet the basic safety and efficiency requirements, so that the development of the industry and the welfare of end users can achieve a win-win situation in a real sense.
Conclusion: Setting the "order" of competition with the "anchor" of standards and promoting the photovoltaic industry from price fighting to value co-creation
is not a healthy form of market economy, but a "three-loss" dilemma of blood loss at the enterprise end, stall at the industry end and dishonesty at the user end. Fortunately, the publication of the group standard of the General Principles of Cost Accounting Model for Photovoltaic Industry has set a clear cost "yardstick" and competitive "traffic lights" for the industry. It gives compliance operators the courage to stand up straight, allows opportunists to have no room to drill, allows technological innovators to get their due rewards, and allows end users to stop paying for low-price traps. We have reason to believe that the comprehensive promotion and implementation of this standard will effectively promote the photovoltaic industry out of the quagmire of internal friction, continue to lead the global renewable energy reform with a more confident and steady attitude, and contribute irreplaceable photovoltaic power to the construction of a powerful energy country.
(Author: Gao Jifan, Deputy to the National People's Congress, Director of the National Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Science and Technology and Chairman of Trina Solar Co., Ltd.)
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