Greetings, fellow solar enthusiasts! Welcome back to my blog where today, we are going to delve into some of the latest price trends in the global PV industry. As you might already know, monitoring these trends can be of enormous help when you’re considering solar panels for your home.
This recent update provided by OPIS, a Dow Jones company, gives us a comprehensive look at the present situation in the solar market. For starters, we see an interesting trend regarding Chinese modules. The benchmark assessment for TOPCon modules, coined as the Chinese Module Marker (CMM), sits steady at $0.121 per W while its mono PERC counterparts are also unchanged at $0.112/W.
Key to note is that the recent few weeks felt a little ease after continuous price hikes in the Chinese market. It appears that market activity has cooled a bit, and solar array for home prices are starting to stabilize, at least domestically.
An interesting trend to follow revolves around overseas demand. Solar companies worldwide are kick-starting this quarter strong. Precisely, solar deployments across Europe are on the rise. Many of these solar companies are commencing installations that they’ve spent winter accumulating contracts for. Quite evidently, it seems like the season for solar has just begun.
An unexpected player in the recent developments is Turkey. The nation has put anti-dumping measures into action against solar panel imports from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Croatia, and Jordan. This consists of a guarantee fee of $25 per square meter being levied on photovoltaic (PV) cells originating from these countries if they are assembled in modules or arranged in panels.
Despite what this might suggest, I don’t believe that these measures will have a dramatic impact on Southeast Asia’s solar module exports. A considerable majority of the region’s modules are destined for the U.S. market, so the focus could be narrowing more on the incoming expiry of the U.S. Section 201 tariff exemption for bifacial modules from Southeast Asia.
One more development to consider is freight rates from Southeast Asia to the United States that remain at $0.02-0.03. It seems some companies have already locked their freights at these lower rates. With about 30 GW of module inventory imported into the United States last year, we are seeing a distortion of prices, as sellers are dropping prices of old stock in an effort to clear inventory.
We can anticipate new domestic U.S. module capacity in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2025. The demand for U.S.-made modules is expected to remain high, and this will support firmer prices for these products in the future.
Keeping a track of these trends can be incredibly beneficial as you navigate the world of solar. Whether you’re a homeowner researching solar panels for your home, a lover of sustainable energy solutions or a solar company looking to stay updated, I hope this analysis brings you one step closer to your solar goals. Until next time, stay sun-smart!
Original Articlehttps://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/03/29/solar-module-prices-remain-steady-amid-unchanged-market-fundamentals/
