China's photovoltaic industry is facing the problem of overcapacity, and many factors such as insufficient overseas demand and local tightening of photovoltaic installation are superimposed, and some photovoltaic factories have begun to lay off employees or take unpaid leave.
According to a report by the Economic Observer on Wednesday (December 20), since November this year, the order volume of many photovoltaic factories has decreased, so some of them have started "technological transformation" or unpaid leave, and front-line production personnel have nothing to do and are forced to be idle, but the R&D line of the production base has remained relatively stable.
At the 2023 annual meeting of the photovoltaic industry held this month, Wang Bohua, honorary chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, revealed that from January to October 2023, the output of photovoltaic manufacturing increased by more than 70% year-on-year, and the new installed capacity was 14256 gigawatts (GW), a year-on-year increase of 145%, and the total output value of the manufacturing end exceeded 13 trillion yuan, and the export value of photovoltaic products is about 43 billion US dollars (about 300 billion yuan).
According to the report, overcapacity and the failure to digest excessive overseas inventories at the beginning of the year are the main reasons for the current problems.
Local ** has played an important role in this round of PV expansion. Some places have special support for new energyIn addition, the fact that the solar energy industry, as a renewable energy industry chain, is not included in the total energy consumption control is also quite attractive to local governments.
In overseas markets, module inventories in Europe are high due to the ebb of the energy crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict. According to a report by SolarPower Europe, the European PV industry**, the EU has added 56 GW of new capacity this year, higher than its target of 48 GW per year, but Chinese companies shipped a large number of modules at the beginning of the year, far exceeding demandStrict import restrictions in the U.S. market have led to a large number of modules being sent back to China.
China's domestic market is also showing signs of saturation. In some traditional provinces with large PV installations in the north, few projects have been approved since July due to excessive installed capacity. Guangdong, Anhui, Liaoning and other places have successively stopped the filing of distributed photovoltaics or tightened the approval of distributed photovoltaic construction in the month.