Financial News Agency, November 27 (Reporter Liu Mengran) Amidst this round of cyclical fluctuations in the photovoltaic industry, energy storage has become a growth opportunity that cannot be ignored. At the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit held in Shanghai today, a number of PV company leaders mentioned that at present, prices in the industrial chain have reached the bottom, so it is difficult to have room for further compression. In the construction of new power systems, it is even more necessary to build a balance system between new installed capacity and users through energy storage.

The reopening of the photovoltaic market this year has included both high growth in new installations in line with expectations, as well as accidents that are not in line with “expectations.” Qu Xiaohua, chairman of Artes (688472.SH), said at the conference that the world's new PV installations are expected to exceed 400GW this year, and is even expected to reach 450GW. This is likely to continue until 2030.

But he also mentioned that in terms of the healthy and orderly development of the entire industrial chain, it does not seem to have met “expectations.” In particular, in the second half of this year, prices in the photovoltaic industry chain changed very rapidly. As a result, in an era of high demand growth, all photovoltaic companies faced even greater challenges.

Liu Shuqi, chairman of Tongwei Co., Ltd. (600438.SH), shared the same opinion. She believes that this year's global installed capacity has exceeded expectations, especially in the Chinese market, far exceeding plans at the beginning of the year. However, leading component companies are also facing the possibility that the annual shipment volume may be slightly lower than the target at the beginning of the year. The reason is mainly affected by European inventories and the industry's new production capacity exceeding the growth rate of market demand, which has diluted the market share of leading companies in shipping.

At present, the excessive fall in module prices and overcapacity in the industry are already challenges that all photovoltaic companies must face. In a number of central state-owned enterprises tenders in the fourth quarter, the overall price of components has been reduced to 1 yuan per watt. In the midst of a sharp rise and fall in supply chain prices, the cost competition is close to the limit.

Gao Jifan, chairman of Tianhe Solar (688599.SH), believes that the decline in component prices is beneficial to terminal demand, but in less than a year, a single watt has dropped from 2 yuan to 1 yuan, and even now some tenders are below 1 yuan. As a result, the entire industry chain is currently unprofitable. This situation is unlikely to continue, and component prices will definitely rebound in the future.

In his view, the survival of the fittest in the market-based photovoltaic industry will be even more obvious next year. According to its disclosure, there is no problem with Tianhe Solar achieving the shipping target of 65 GW or more this year. However, in the process of increasing industry demand from the original 400GW to 500GW, many new companies joined, causing the concentration of the industry to decline.

Gao Jifan predicts that as the new battery or silicon chip production capacity of leading companies increases, the growth rate of these companies will be higher than the average market growth rate, and the leading market share will rise again, so the production capacity of other companies will inevitably be squeezed. This is an industry that needs to be prepared for the future.

In addition to this, another bottleneck in the development of the photovoltaic industry is the issue of consumption. Based on this, the demand for energy storage is particularly promising. Gao Jifan believes that the current amount of energy storage compared to photovoltaics is still insufficient. On the basis of this year, next year's energy storage is expected to double. He said that in some regions abroad, 1 megawatt of photovoltaics needs to be equipped with 4 megawatts of energy storage to adjust a large amount of photovoltaic power generation for use at night, especially during the period when electricity prices peak between 6-10 p.m., which can form better collaboration.

In response, he suggested that China should also promote photovoltaic+energy storage matching as soon as possible, whether on the power generation side or on the user side, by introducing a high proportion of energy storage into the entire power grid system to accelerate the formation of a new system centered on renewable energy. “The first is to actively promote policy direction, and the second is to do a good job in scientific and technological innovation and customer collaboration. We hope that the integration of optical storage will become a future development trend.” Gao Jifan said at the meeting.