Do you know that the revolution of silicon materials is about to start?

The National Energy Administration recently released the "2023 Energy Work Guidance". It is clear that this year it is necessary to consolidate the development advantages of the wind power photovoltaic industry, promote the first batch of large-scale wind power photovoltaic base projects focusing on deserts, Gobi, and desert areas to be put into operation, and build the second and third batches of projects. The annual wind power and photovoltaic installed capacity will increase by about 160 million kilowatts. According to forecasts, the photovoltaic industry is expected to continue to maintain a growth rate of 40% in 2023.

While promoting the rapid and healthy development of the photovoltaic industry, promoting the utilization of renewable energy, and effectively realizing energy conservation and emission reduction, we must pay attention to and accelerate the development of related material industries including polysilicon. By improving the awareness of the importance of developing solar photovoltaic related materials industry, improving the level of independent innovation, and actively developing green production technology, we will continue to promote the cost reduction and efficiency increase of the photovoltaic industry.

Situation Analysis of Photovoltaic Industry

The solar photovoltaic industry chain is composed of five parts: silicon purification, silicon ingot/wafer production, photovoltaic cell production, photovoltaic cell module production, and application systems. In the entire industrial chain, from silicon purification to application systems, the technical threshold is getting lower and lower. Correspondingly, the number of enterprises is gradually increasing, and the profits of the entire photovoltaic industry chain are mainly concentrated in the upstream polysilicon production link. Profitability is significantly better than downstream.

As the upstream of the photovoltaic industry, polysilicon almost accounts for the bulk of the industry's profits, which has also triggered a new round of expansion. According to incomplete statistics, by the end of 2024, China's polysilicon production capacity will exceed 4 million tons. If these production capacities are fully released, the tight supply situation in the industry will be greatly eased.

After several twists and turns, where is the way forward for silicon materials?

Since the end of 2022, the price of silicon materials has experienced several ups and downs. First, there was a "cliff-like" drop before the Spring Festival in 2023, and then rebounded rapidly after the festival. The highest quotation was once close to 250,000 yuan/ton. However, after the Qingming Festival this year, the average price of silicon materials fell below the 200,000 yuan/ton mark.

According to the data of the Silicon Industry Branch, last week the price range of domestic polycrystalline re-feeding was 183,000-197,000 yuan/ton, and the price range of polycrystalline compact material was 180,000-193,000 yuan/ton. The era of high-priced silicon materials may be gone forever return. The "involution" of the photovoltaic track is serious. In 2023, the surplus of silicon materials will be inevitable, and the situation of shortage of silicon materials will be reversed.

From rod silicon to granular silicon

In the medium and long term, competition in the polysilicon market is intensifying, and it is also the best way out for polysilicon to realize cost reduction and quality improvement in the polysilicon production process. Traditional rod-shaped silicon has high production costs and high carbon emissions. At present, countries are still actively exploring new production technologies, and the structure of silicon materials is also shifting towards energy conservation and production promotion.

The granular silicon technology has basically achieved stable mass production from around 2010 to the end of 2019, and has also formed substantial competition with the improved Siemens method of the traditional rod-shaped silicon in the industry. It promotes the innovation and development of the industry, healthy competition, and plays a role in boosting the ecology of the entire polysilicon and new technology industry chain.

During the period, new national standards, international standards and patent authorization of some related technologies also showed that granular silicon has been highly recognized by the industry. At present, the supply of granular silicon shows a trend of increasing month by month, and has reached the level of tens of thousands of tons of monthly production capacity. Mainstream enterprises also temporarily maintain a relatively stable price difference with dense bulk materials.

The advantages of granular silicon help silicon material technology iteration

Granular silicon is mainly produced by the silane fluidized bed process, and the carbon emission is 37kgCO?/Kg, which can significantly reduce the production power consumption, steam energy consumption and tail gas treatment energy consumption. According to public data, the cost of granular silicon is more than 15% lower than that of rod silicon.

Granular silicon has lower investment intensity, power consumption, and labor costs. According to the measured data, the power consumption of FBR granular silicon is only 18 kWh/KG, far lower than the 60-70 kWh/KG of traditional polysilicon comprehensive power consumption. On the use side, granular silicon has better fluidity and filling properties, which is conducive to continuous Czochralski crystal pulling; on the quality side, since granular silicon does not require crushing process, silicon material loss is avoided, crushing costs are reduced, and the risk of introducing impurities during crushing is eliminated. , with high purity and high bulk density, which can make automated production more controllable.

Another thing worthy of attention is that the proposal of the domestic "double carbon" goal has drawn a ceiling for the growth of carbon-based materials. According to calculations, compared with the rod-shaped silicon produced by the Siemens method, the same volume of granular silicon used in the production process can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 74%, and the overall energy consumption can be reduced by 65%-70%.

According to industry development forecasts, the proportion of granular silicon production capacity in China will increase from 6% in 2021 to 17% in 2022, until 28% after 2025. According to the research inference of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the canopy area of 1 hectare> can consume 205 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Granular silicon is the only raw material product that facilitates the measurement and calculation of photovoltaic modules' carbon emission rights. Its low-carbon properties are a key part of optimizing the calculation of full-caliber carbon emissions in the photovoltaic industry, and it is also the core technology for the implementation of technical carbon reduction in the photovoltaic industry. Every 100,000 tons of granular silicon can be installed with 28.5GW photovoltaic modules, and the annual carbon dioxide emission reduction is 35.56 million tons, which is equivalent to the annual consumption of 1,500 mu of forest land.

In the future, granular silicon will help the deep decarbonization of the energy industry by virtue of its excellent carbon footprint. Under the background of "dual carbon", it will promote the global clean energy revolution and move towards the era of zero carbon.

Will lead the silicon material to a higher end

Starting from 2022, new battery technology (N-type) will develop rapidly, and the power generation efficiency will be greatly improved. TOPCON, HJT and other batteries have gradually achieved mass production. The new battery technology puts forward higher requirements on the quality of polysilicon. After continuous technology research and development and process improvement, domestic enterprises have achieved mass production of N-type granular silicon, which has effectively promoted the new The landing of battery technology. We believe that with the development of granular silicon technology and the gradual popularization of its application scale, granular silicon will surely lead the photovoltaic industry to move towards a higher end.