Silicon/wafer costs increased again, many big panel manufacturers suspended production partly or completely July 3rd, 2022

Solar panel prices increased to 0.30USD/WP FOB, what's the reasonable level in Q3/Q4 2022

On June 27th, one of the biggest silicon/wafer supplier Zhonghuan Silicon announced its price increase (around 5%), followed by the biggest solar cells manufacturer TongWei Solar, who announced cells price increase of 0.06-0.07CNY/wp on July 1st, which means the solar panel price will be 0.008-0.01USD/wp higher than June's level, causing the panel's FOB price reach a maximum high level at 0.30USD/wp. Considering that the transportation costs by sea is still as expensive at 8500-11000USD/40HQ to EU ports, the CIF prices of general PERC Mono panels will range from 0.31USD/WP to 0.33USD/WP (0.295EUR-0.315EUR/WP) in Q3 2022.

The solar panel manufacturers are now under huge cost-control pressures because most of them only hold 1-2% profit, while at least 30% of them (including many Tier 1 brands) had been losing money in 2020 and 2021. In order to minimize the unnecessary production costs and maintain a comparative-safe business operation, more than 12 Tier 1 listed module manufacturers announced on July 2nd that they will suspend their production lines partly or completely immediately.

According to earlier predictions from the global marketing research organizations, the wafer/silicon costs are not going down until Q1 2023, which means that within the next half year of 2022, the solar panel prices are not possible to return to the previous levels in 2020 or earlier time. Namely, the global solar market has to either suspend the current projects or buy panels with higher prices, whilst many project owners or EPC/Investors may face the risk of signed contracts breaking in the coming two or three months.

In fact, manufacturers are not willing to stop their production in any condition due to their massive investments in their millions-of-dollars production facility upgrading. Unfortunately, it seems smarter to suspend production lines temporarily than risking company bankruptcy in such worse supply-chain environment. Mysolar had been updating price levels to its global partners and predicting for them that the panel costs are going up in 2022. Lucky to some of Mysolar's partners who confirmed orders early and got better prices as returns. We forecast that the panel price will be back to 0.26-0.27USD/WP FOB in Q1 2023, and 0.25-0.265USD/WP FOB in Q2 2023, but impossible to return the 0.23-0.24USD/WP FOB level before the end of 2023.

A small inventory of 4 containers SHINGLED Mono perc 395W are still available in Rotterdam for our lucky new partners. Please return with your demanded quantity if you are interested.