In the second half of 2024, the photovoltaic industry will usher in development

Author/New Energy Front

Source/New energy straight ahead

After this long winter, the hopes and expectations of spring are quickly forgotten, thought this spring will not come, but everything has a cycle, the season that belongs to it will eventually come, just like occasionally there are dark clouds and rainy days, but the sun’s light will eventually come out, the photovoltaic industry using solar energy after more than 2 years of dark time, also began to expose the sun, Some products have quietly bottomed out.

Energy storage bottoming

After entering July, the performance forecast came out one after another, the market did not expect the photovoltaic industry, but some companies released a performance forecast early, the key is still very good.

Taking the lead is the series welding machine leader Otwy, according to the company’s 2024 half-year performance forecast data, is expected to make a net profit of 730 ~ 770 million in the first half of 2024, an increase of 38.92% to 47.70%. The median value is 750 million, that is, Q2 is 417 million, an increase of 25% quarter-on-quarter. To know that last year was originally a rapid growth trend, can still achieve faster growth year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, it is no wonder that it dares to do the first photovoltaic industry to come out to predict the performance of the forerunner.

Not long after the announcement of Otway, Jinlang Technology also urgently announced the first half of 2024 performance forecast, and worried that everyone only saw the first half of the net profit of the higher decline, but did not see Q2 company performance has been comprehensively improved, the company also intimately announced the Q2 performance directly, is expected to achieve Q2 net profit of 305-380 million yuan. The median value is 340 million, an increase of 13% year-on-year, and more than ten times the sequential increase. Considering that many light storage industries are still in a high performance state in the second quarter of last year, Jinlang Technology’s Q2 performance is also bright enough.

In addition to these two companies, the performance of household storage leader De Ye shares is also very bright, Q2 to achieve a net profit of 750 ~ 850 million, +11.10% ~+25.91%, +73.19%~+96.28%.

Most of the reasons for the performance growth announced by these companies point to the fact that the household storage in the European and American markets is nearing completion and is expected to enter a new round of replenishment, coupled with the rapid outbreak of emerging markets such as the Middle East, Latin America and Southeast Asia, the household storage ushered in a reversal turning point and entered a new round of growth cycle.

Overseas large storage demand is also strong, domestic light storage parity era, market-oriented driven spontaneous demand, the first half of the energy storage bidding 42Gwh, an increase of 58%, still maintain a rapid growth trend.

Energy storage is expected to become the first plate in the photovoltaic industry to hit the bottom, gradually entering a new round of growth in Q3, and the capital market always reflects in advance that many energy-related companies have been ready to move recently.

Middle East local rich to sell Chinese photovoltaic

Although the situation is not as good as energy storage, other links of photovoltaic are slowly changing. Just this year, many domestic photovoltaic companies began to increase their efforts to break the internal volume at the same time, in the domestic downturn in the industrial chain price more prominent cost-effective attraction, the Middle East local rich have also accelerated the sale of China’s photovoltaic industry.

On July 16, 2024, China’s new energy giants TCL Central, JinkoSolar, Sunshine Power, and Vision Technology announced that they would cooperate with RELC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Vision Industries Company to invest and set up factories in Saudi Arabia.

TCL Central will work with Vision Industries and RELC, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund PIF, to build a 20GW photovoltaic crystal chip project in Saudi Arabia, becoming the largest overseas crystal chip investment cooperation project with an investment amount of up to 2.08 billion yuan.

Jinkosolar will partner with RELC and Vision Industries to invest nearly $1 billion to build 10GW of high-efficiency battery and module projects. Vision Technology will cooperate with the two companies to establish wind power equipment joint ventures in Saudi Arabia.

Just a day ago, on July 15, Sunpower also signed three energy storage contracts with ALGIHAZ, Saudi Arabia, with a capacity of 2.6GWh per project, totaling 7.8 GWh, becoming the world’s largest grid-side energy storage order!

As long as the price is right, there is no shortage of buyers for good things. China’s photovoltaic industry has already dominated the world, with enough cost-effective, after nearly two years of internal volume, the current price is called not to buy is a loss, Saudi Arabia to accelerate the sale is not surprising, the next similar Latin America, Southeast Asia and other regions are also likely to accelerate the Chinese photovoltaic industry.

Photovoltaic exports in the first half of 2024 ushered in a turning point

Whether it is the performance forecast of energy storage companies, or Saudi Arabia’s acceleration of China’s photovoltaic efforts, it proves that the photovoltaic industry is beginning to dawn, but this is ultimately one-sided data, July 20, the General Administration of Customs announced in June and the first half of the import and export data, in a macro perspective to do a more comprehensive verification.

In the first half of the year, China’s photovoltaic main materials (silicon wafers, batteries, modules) accumulated exports of 18.979 billion US dollars, last year’s 29.229 billion US dollars down 35%, it seems that the decline has not stopped, but in June all kinds of photovoltaic main materials to achieve exports of 3.063 billion US dollars, down 32.83%, slightly up 1.76% in May. The chain is already showing signs of braking.

Especially the performance of the inverter link is more amazing, in the first half of the year, China’s inverter exports of 4.05 billion US dollars, down 28.306%, down 22.89% compared with last year’s 51.94 billion US dollars. But exports in June amounted to $918 million, up 17.69% from the previous month!

In the first half of the year, domestic photovoltaic enterprises produced 270.24GW of solar cells, an increase of 15.21% compared with 234.57GW in the same period last year. In May this year, China produced 49.14GW of solar cells, an increase of 4.6%. Although the production capacity is still growing, but compared to the past growth rate has significantly slowed down, although these capacity can not be cleared in the short term, but with the gradual growth of market demand, plus some enterprises began to reduce the operating rate or production, by the end of the year gradually into a tight balance is still worth looking forward to.

In fact, objectively speaking, although the photovoltaic industry chain is very bleak in the past two years, the demand side has not been bad, whether it is domestic or global. According to the previous forecast of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, the global new photovoltaic installed capacity in 2023 is 390 GW, an increase of 69.57%, Bloomberg New Energy is even more optimistic, is expected to add 444 GW of photovoltaic installed capacity in 2023. The domestic market is even more violent, according to the National Energy Administration data, China’s new PV installed capacity in 2023 increased by 128.89GW compared with 2022, an increase of more than 147%. This year, many institutions predict that the global PV installed capacity will exceed 540GW this year, and China will reach about 220GW.

There is no problem on the demand side, the bleak industry in the past two years is mainly the supply side too fast, leading to the emergence of stage overcapacity in the industry, causing prices to fall, coupled with the secondary market in the past few years excessive speculation, and entered the process of squeezing the bubble, more miserable.

But now with the gradual completion of destocking in overseas markets, the rapid rise of emerging markets such as the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and domestic destocking is also accelerating, and the date of the photovoltaic industry bottom is expected to come faster.

The fastest Q4 is expected to enter a tight balance state, at the latest early next year to bottom out, and the capital market will reflect in advance, that is, in the second half of the year, a large probability of photovoltaic plate will start to be active.

(Some information source: Huaxia Energy Network)