Recently, under the guidance of the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the group standard "General Principles of Cost Accounting Model for Photovoltaic Industry" (hereinafter referred to as "General Principles"), which was compiled by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, was officially released, causing great concern in the industry. The General Principles define the cost accounting methods and parameters of the four manufacturing links of silicon materials, silicon wafers, batteries and components in the photovoltaic crystalline silicon industry chain, and establish a unified and verifiable standardized cost accounting system. The introduction of this standard provides a core technical grasp for industry governance from "soft constraints" to "hard system", and is a key step for the photovoltaic industry to get out of the loss dilemma and move towards high-quality development.
First, the situation is critical: the whole industry is mired in losses. In the first half
of 2026, China's photovoltaic industry ushered in the most severe performance winter in history. According to public statistics, of the 26 photovoltaic listed companies that have disclosed the semi-annual report forecast, only 4 have made profits, 22 have fallen into the quagmire of losses, and the total loss scale of the industry has reached 18.3 billion to 21.4 billion yuan, far exceeding market expectations, and the whole industry will usher in 11 consecutive quarters of losses. This industry crisis not only affects the core manufacturing links of the main industry chain such as polysilicon, silicon wafers, batteries and components, but also the supporting areas such as photovoltaic glass and power plant operation. The whole industry chain is undergoing deep adjustment. The core crux of the
industry's large-scale losses lies in the disorderly price involution caused by the serious mismatch between supply and demand. Over the past few years, the industry has expanded its production explosively, and the production capacity of polysilicon, silicon wafers, batteries and components has been greatly expanded, and the total supply of the whole chain has far exceeded the actual global installed capacity. In contrast to terminal demand, in the first half of 2026, due to multiple factors such as insufficient consumption of new energy and the high base of rush installation in the same period last year, the new photovoltaic installed capacity in China dropped sharply in stages, and the market digestion capacity weakened significantly. The imbalance between supply and demand directly triggers the "price war" of the whole industry chain, and the prices of products in various links continue to plummet, some of which have approached or even fallen below the cash cost line, and enterprises have fallen into a vicious circle of "the more production, the greater the loss".
At present, China's photovoltaic industry is experiencing the most severe cyclical adjustment in history, and the industrial operation is facing unprecedented imbalance between supply and demand and business crisis. There is no buffer window period for legalization and standardization of industry governance, so it is urgent to standardize the order of industrial competition.
2. Dilemma: "Anti-involution" lacks operational law enforcement tools
. As early as 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the General Administration of Market Supervision and other national ministries and commissions have begun to promote the "anti-involution" work in the photovoltaic industry. In July 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a forum for manufacturing enterprises, focusing on low-price and disorderly competition in the photovoltaic industry; in August of the same year, six departments jointly held a forum to curb low-price and disorderly competition.
However, a key issue remains unresolved: how to identify "selling below cost"? By what standard is the cost calculated? Article 4 of
the Provisions on the Suppression of Low-price Dumping defines "production cost" as manufacturing cost plus management cost, sales cost and financial cost, but this definition of regulation is facing great difficulties in the actual operation of the photovoltaic industry-different enterprises have different understandings of the cost caliber, and integrated enterprises and specialized enterprises. There are great differences in the rules of depreciation and expense accrual. Without a unified cost accounting standard, the judgment of "selling below cost price" lacks quantitative basis, and price law enforcement has no way to start. Compiled under the guidance of the General Administration of Market Supervision,
the General Rules completely clarify the cost articulation relationship between standard terms and current low-price dumping regulations, and follow a complete set of enterprise accounting standards throughout the process to build a standardized cost calculation system covering the whole process from silicon materials to components, with different technical routes and levels. All the formulas, parameters and allocation rules of the whole set of accounting model can be verified by the retrospective verification of MES and ERP financial book data, which has strong verifiability. As far as the regulatory authorities are concerned, this standard fills in the blank of cost quantification tools for photovoltaic industry: when carrying out industry price monitoring, enterprise cost self-examination and low-price dumping clue verification, the same set of accounting logic can be used to collect and calculate cost data, so as to thoroughly solve the pain points of "different calibers, incomparable data and no basis for verification" in the past. It has become a powerful standardized technical grasp for the competent authorities to carry out industry governance.
3. Breaking the situation: The group standard provides a quantifiable judgment basis
for price law enforcement. For the first time, the group standard has set up a three-tier cost accounting framework with logical self-consistency, traceability and verifiability in the whole industry, which fully realizes the five core principles of "scientificity, unity, comparability, operability and verifiability". All formulas, parameters and calibers can be directly verified by enterprise MES/ERP system and financial book data backtracking.
For the first time, three types of parallel cost accounting calibres are defined. Three sets of independent and parallel calculation methods are introduced, namely, enterprise caliber for enterprise disclosure and industry benchmarking, single-base caliber for base performance appraisal and supervision value, and industry caliber for industry research, which match the accounting needs of different scenarios and do not conflict with each other.
Completely plug the cost accounting arbitrage loopholes. Specially set up a series of binding clauses: clearly require that integrated enterprises must adopt the step-by-step full cost carry-over method, the full cost of the previous link is included in the raw material input of the next link as the original value, and it is strictly prohibited to use the internal transfer price lower than full cost to falsely reduce the cost of downstream products; it is clear that the depreciation of idle capacity can not be actively excluded, and must be included in the full cost through the period cost; If the internal settlement price under the single base caliber deviates from the industry reference value by more than ± 20%, the enterprise must submit a sufficient basis for proof, which eliminates the common operation space of artificially lowering the link cost in the previous industry from the rule level.
The whole chain covers four links and is modeled by technical routes. Detailed cost accounting rules have been formulated for the four core manufacturing links of polysilicon, silicon wafers, batteries and components, and different process routes such as trichlorosilane method and silane fluidized bed method for silicon materials, TOPCon, HJT and BC for batteries have been adapted to the accounting rules respectively. It thoroughly solves the problem of incomparable cost data caused by the difference of accounting rules between enterprises with different technical routes, and makes the cost data of enterprises with different routes and scales have the basis of horizontal benchmarking for the first time.
With this set of unified cost calculation rules recognized by the whole industry, the long-term vague determination of low-price dumping finally has a clear quantifiable yardstick, and the industry governance has formally upgraded from the soft constraints of self-discipline initiatives in the past to a hard system with standards to follow and methods to check.
4. Tools: The group standard will be an important starting point
for the competent authorities to carry out industry governance. In 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will clearly focus on the governance of the photovoltaic industry. The core measures include improving the normal price monitoring mechanism, strengthening the tracking and disposal of enterprises with abnormal prices, curbing vicious low-price competition by means of market-oriented legalization, and promoting the orderly clearance of backward production capacity. Normalized price monitoring, early warning of abnormal low prices and precise industrial regulation are all based on unified, real and comparable industry cost data, and this standard is the underlying data base of this monitoring system. The promulgation of the
General Principles provides a unified data basis for price monitoring, capacity analysis and macro-decision-making of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments. The standard distinguishes three sets of cost calculation methods, namely, enterprise caliber, single base caliber and industry caliber, which respectively serve the needs of enterprise benchmarking, regulatory value and industry research. In particular, the industry cost model and release mechanism specified in Chapter 8 will be regularly released by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association based on the data of sample enterprises, providing an authoritative data source for the competent authorities to judge the real cost level of the industry.
It is noteworthy that the standard system of photovoltaic industry is being intensively constructed recently. In May 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued two mandatory national standards, Safety Requirements for Photovoltaic Modules and Requirements for Nameplate Identification of Photovoltaic Modules. On July 2, 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and the General Administration of Market Supervision jointly issued three mandatory national standards for energy efficiency of photovoltaic energy consumption, covering key links such as polysilicon, silicon wafers, components and inverters . Energy consumption standard tube "can produce", safety standard tube "product is not qualified", and cost accounting standard tube "price is not reasonable". These three types of standards cooperate with each other and constitute a complete closed-loop of industry governance.
From "initiative" to "system", from "soft constraint" to "hard system", this step, the photovoltaic industry has gone too long, but also too difficult. The promulgation of the General Principles marks a key step in this process, and industry governance has since been provided with quantifiable, verifiable and enforceable institutional tools. Every step of
system construction is not easy, but this step is very important.
(Author: Song Zhiping, President of China Association of Listed Companies)
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