Who is the light and heat and photovoltaic?

Solar power has been recognized as one of the most promising new energy sources. However, when various capitals blew up the assembly number and smashed their heads into the industrial army, they would often get a little confused at the juncture of path choices.

Whether light and heat will replace the photovoltaics? Faced with a long industrial chain, the technical camp each competing, everyone wants to take the fastest wealth train.

Photovoltaic giants collective bleeding

Photovoltaic module giants appear to have collectively fallen into ice caves in 2011.

Since 2011, solar energy companies in the United States, Germany, and other countries, including leading companies such as Solon SE, have declared bankruptcy due to the European debt crisis and severe oversupply of photovoltaic modules.

As of the end of 2011, China has more than 1,000 manufacturing companies in this field, and it has occupied 5 seats in the newly released 2011 “Top 10 Global PV Modules”.

And China's photovoltaic giants, which look slick, also have to tighten their belts to live. More than one company has been reported to be bankrupt.

Photovoltaic companies that recently released their 2011 performance reports include Suntech Power, Jinko Solar, Yingli Green Energy, Trina Solar, Oriental Sunrise Solar, Zhejiang Sunflower, and Northern Optoelectronics. Net profit of the company has declined without exception . The red-coloured sales in return are generally loss-making performance.

Some industry giants have published risk index ratings for several giants. Four of the six listed companies are from China, including Sevi, Suntech, Jinko, and Artes.

LDK was the first company to be bankrupted and was the company with the highest asset-liability ratio in the industry, once reaching 80%. On September 17, 2010, Chairman Peng Xiaofeng said at the company’s five-year anniversary celebration: LDK LDK is the only real whole-industry-chain layout company in the entire photovoltaic industry.

Suntech's 2011 was also unbearable. They were caught in negative news, such as “swindling donation”, executive departures, and layoffs in disguise. At the end of 2011, a microblog that “Suntech will apply for bankruptcy protection” has made Suntech the focus of public opinion. At the end of 2011, when responding to the “double reverse” investigation conference in the United States, Shi Zhengrong answered the question of how to deal with the predicament and replied: “Only talk about 'double reverse' and not mention Suntech.”

For photovoltaic module manufacturers, the good days of earning money with their eyes closed seem to be going away. Since March 2011, the photovoltaic industry has been accompanied by tremendous pressure to “digest inventory”, and some companies have had to digest inventory at the expense of losses. According to the latest quarterly report released by Solarbuzz, a research institute, it is expected that the ex-factory prices of PV modules will fall by 37% to 50% over 2010 levels.

Li Junfeng, deputy director of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, did not agree with the "freezing point of the photovoltaic market." He told reporters: "This industry has grown from a new industry to a competitive industry. The era of profiteering has passed and meager profits are normal. The market has always been very warm and it is a problem in this industry."

In 2011, the total installed capacity of photovoltaics in the world was 27GW. At present, China has already mass-produced and added 50GW of photovoltaic capacity under construction. Photovoltaic manufacturing will face painful integration and reshuffle.

"Now is the best time to invest in power plants."

The danger is organic. The downward movement of profits is an indisputable fact. New opportunities are also facts.

In May 2011, Zhang Yi, a well-known executive in the industry for nearly six years in Shangde CFO, left the old club to become the executive director and CEO of Tianhua Sunshine Holdings Co., Ltd. Tianhua Sunshine is an industry enthusiasm committed to the development of power station terminals and investment and financing services.

The departure of a CFO from a listed company always leads to speculation. In fact, in the past six months, the CFOs of 11 Chinese PV companies listed in the United States have left 4 places, and it is said that the CFOs of 2 other companies are also considering resigning.

Zhang Yi’s choice fits with capital flow.

“Photovoltaic modules have become the same bulk commodity manufacturing as traditional resource-type products, and its development will be like hydropower and thermal power, and the ultimate master of the industry’s discourse right is the terminal demand side. It’s like the housing market, building materials suppliers, and builders. Developers, who have the highest profits? It goes without saying.” Zhang Yi told reporters.

The plunge in component prices is another factor in the goodness of the terminal. "The economic crisis is not a bad thing. Components have been reduced in price, so the scale of application has gone up," Zeng Shaojun, secretary general of the New Energy Chamber of Commerce of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, told reporters.

Xu Zheng, director of the Institute of Solar Energy at Beijing Jiaotong University, agrees with this view. He told reporters: “Now is the best time to invest in power stations. The price of the battery panel has dropped. At the end of last year, it was still 12 yuan per watt, which is now 5-6 yuan per watt and half the cost.”

In August 2011, after the on-grid tariff was introduced, the western region has already set off an unprecedented wave of power station construction. Traditional photovoltaic companies such as GCL, Wuxi Suntech, and Yingli Green Energy have all been involved in the field of photovoltaic power plants, and state-owned enterprises such as Guodian and Huadian have also entered.

Zhang Yi's intervention in the upstream capital is not optimistic: "This industry is very strange and does not understand the cooperation of the score-makers. Everything is on the ground."

Zhang Yi said that the threshold for power station development is relatively high, involving the collection of various resources such as policies and cultures, and it requires specialized local teams. Many manufacturing companies do not have the capability to develop power stations. “China's photovoltaic manufacturing industry has entered an extreme scale and cost. During the sensitive period, we must focus on what we are really good at in the industry chain, and we must not blindly seek for the bigger ones.

PV inverters are another sub-sector that has benefited from the end boom. Due to the limitation of external qualifications, it is impossible to open the inverter industry in foreign markets, and it is expected to achieve "import substitution" after the start of the domestic market.

Photovoltaic Building Integration

With the issuance of the “Circular on Implementing the 2012 Solar Photovoltaic Building Application Demonstration” by the General Office of the Ministry of Finance and the General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, building integration of photovoltaics may become the latest trend in domestic development of solar energy.

According to the “Notice”, the State will implement policy subsidies for the further improvement of the application level of solar photovoltaic buildings, and optoelectronic integration projects that are closely integrated with the height of building materials, such as building materials. The subsidy standard is tentatively set at 9 yuan per watt, which is generally combined with construction. In the form of utilization, the subsidy standard is tentatively set at 7.5 yuan per watt.

At present, China's photovoltaic power generation accounts for less than 0.1% of total social power consumption. It lags far behind developed countries, mainly adopting a single model of scale development and centralized power transmission. 90% of photovoltaic power generation comes from large-scale ground power stations.

Photovoltaic countries represented by Germany and Italy have gradually encouraged the installation of small-scale photovoltaic projects in the revision of their photovoltaic policies. The main part of this is the photovoltaic building integration project.

The development idea of ​​distributed energy is an effective way to avoid the problem of centralized grid-connected photovoltaic power generation.

From the perspective of subsidies, although the installation price of small-scale PV systems is slightly higher than that of large-scale power plants, with the continuous decline in the prices of photovoltaic products, subsidies have reached more than half of the cost of installation. If some local subsidies are provided, it can be realized on the user side. Cheap internet access.

Who can not replace who

China has a vast territory and varies widely in natural conditions. Different regions apply to solar power facilities of different technical levels and scales.

For photovoltaic power generation, Xu Zheng believes that market demand will mainly depend on two points: the level of conversion efficiency and the price. Thin film technology is characterized by low cost and low conversion rate. Crystalline silicon technology is characterized by relatively high conversion rate and high cost, while concentrating solar technology is at the initial stage of commercial application.

In addition, considering the overall cost, the low product cost alone is not sufficient to explain the low production cost of this industry, but also to include the larger land cost. At present, the conversion rate of crystalline silicon cells is twice that of thin-film batteries. To build a power plant of the same size, the cost of land for thin-film batteries will be twice that of crystalline silicon.

All three technologies have their own market segments. Thin-film technology is suitable for glass curtain walls because of its low light characteristics. Crystal silicon is more widely used in roof solar panels, and concentrating solar power is suitable for large-scale power generation in vast areas.

For a short period of time, crystalline silicon cells still dominate solar power generation.

Another issue that has been debated in the industry is whether photothermal energy can replace photovoltaics. Compared with photovoltaic power generation, photothermal power generation is more convenient to interface with current domestic power grids. However, the constraints of heat storage technologies and the economic costs of solar thermal power stations have increased the difficulty of power generation. Photothermal heat is more suitable for large-scale power generation, and photovoltaics are relatively small, suitable for families and residential communities.

Xu Zheng believes that a diversified market structure will bring about the long-term coexistence of diversification of the technological path: "Objectively speaking, there is no substitute for whom."