In its photovoltaic supplier report in the second quarter of 2022, the Clean Energy Association, a solar energy and storage consulting company, said that by the end of 2022, the capacity of polysilicon may reach 295GW, and by the end of 2023, the capacity may reach 536GW.

CEA said that it is expected that the capacity in 2023 will far exceed that of solar devices. Although this may indicate that the supply problem may begin to ease, the steel ingot capacity increased by nearly 30GW in the second quarter. It attributed this to two facilities that enabled 23GW of Internet access. CEA said that the wafer capacity decreased slightly, mainly because an undisclosed major supplier cancelled its multi wafer capacity. The 17 suppliers covered in the report increased the battery capacity by 22% in the second quarter of 2022, bringing the capacity of 47GW online, totaling 262GW.

The output of photovoltaic modules reached 324GW in the second quarter. CEA said that it is expected that by the end of this year, this number will increase by 20% to 400GW. The CEA report covers only seven suppliers, with complete vertical integration from ingot to module production. Most others run on unit and module links in the supply chain. With the increase of commercial wafer options, most suppliers hardly need to expand upstream.

The company said that suppliers were working to optimize the wafer size to achieve industry standardization of 210mm and 182mm module sizes. The 182 mm Plus increases the wafer height and further reduces the white space caused by the wafer gap, enabling an additional output of up to 5 W. The 210mm reduction has significantly reduced the wafer width of a small number of roof applications at the expense of power output. CEA said that it is expected to introduce new module sizes for the residential solar market.

China's installed capacity will exceed 100GW in 2022. CEA expects that the installation volume in China will decline slightly in 2022, because high module prices will affect projects of utility scale. The company said that many investment decisions were delayed because the project could not reach the internal rate of return threshold. Keywords: overseas news, engineering news

Most polysilicon supply chains originate from China. Outside China, the steel ingot production capacity is 11GW, the battery production capacity is 42GW, and the module production capacity is 50GW. By the end of 2023, these capacities are expected to expand to 23GW, 73GW and 74GW respectively. CEA said that the uncertainty of the policy continued to delay the expansion plan of suppliers, because suppliers remained cautious because of the continuing uncertainty of the policy of the United States around the Uighur forced labor prevention law and anti environmental investigation.Editor/Xing Wentao