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原帖由 franklyer 于 2006-3-16 13:52 发表
實新聞 2006-03-16 10:42:14 記者 郭妍希 報導
美國太陽能顧問機構Solarbuzz 15日發表研究報告指出,受多晶矽(polysilicon)仍持續短缺影響,2006年全球太陽能光電(photovoltaic,簡稱PV)市場成長率恐將由2005年 ...
呵呵,这个问题是很有意思啊,值得跟踪观察,要知道Sun Screen II report的作者Michael Rogol这个牛人最近也在为这个问题和Piper Jaffrey在论战,Rogol的观点是多晶硅是“紧”(tight)而不是“短缺”,Piper Jaffrey的报告大家都知道是说“短缺”(short)。此外Rogol认为06年用于PV的多晶硅可增加4000吨,因而可以支持PV行业增长30%,而piper jaffrey认为只能增长5%。
附全文:
Silicon — shortage or tight market?
Thursday, Feb 9 2006 1:05 pm
This week saw the publication of yet another story about the PV industry’s silicon supply problems, this time in Business Week. As I stated when I first began writing about the issue, the PV industry had known for years that they had a problem in the making, but that little had been done to address it before it happened. This article tells us why:
The shortage has caused prices for polysilicon to more than double over the last two years. As Economics 101 teaches, that should prompt producers to expand capacity. But for suppliers such as Michigan-based Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., the world’s largest producer, the decision hasn’t been easy. For one thing, the company was badly burned in 1998. It had just built a new facility in response to pleas from semiconductor makers when Asia went into a slowdown. Demand for silicon plunged, and the factory had to be shuttered.
Those were the good old days — at least for the PV industry — of cheap silicon, though obviously Hemlock’s reluctance to scale up production sooner is also a product of those days. Fortunately, as I have noted many times before, polysilicon manufacturers finally anted up for new plants, but not without first transferring some of the risk to their PV-industry customers:
Hemlock finally decided that the [photovoltaics] industry is real, but only after solar companies agreed to share the risk by signing contracts to buy the future output. So in December the company began an expansion worth more than $400 million that will increase silicon production by 50%. Competitors are following suit. On Jan. 12, Munich-based Wacker started construction on a silicon manufacturing plant. The new supply, however, won’t be onstream until 2008.
Though the article does not say it, I strongly suspect that some of Hemlock’s competitors also insisted on long-term contracts, and that the PV companies were only too happy to sign them in order to ensure their future supplies of polysilicon.
Finally, I thought I would share a related remark from a presentation by Michael Rogol, author of the Sun Screen II report. He argues that the supply of polysilicon feedstock is tight, but that it is not short. While silicon is not plentiful in the current market, he argues that prices have stabilized instead of continuing to rise unchecked. The high, but stable, prices indicate a tight market, while if there was truly a shortage the prices would continue to rise uncontrollably.
At some point, obviously, rising prices must stabilize if for no other reason that demand will fall as the prices increase. Clearly, demand did not fall in the PV industry, as evidenced by the estimated 40% growth in shipments last year, so I suppose there is something to Rogol’s argument. His industry growth projections for 2005 were predicated largely on his assessment that PV and electronics companies could draw 4,000 tons of silicon out of inventory to supplement what they were purchasing on the open market. The total silicon supply in 2005 would increase about 12.5% over 2004 and fuel an increase of 40% in PV module shipments; his projections appear to have been largely correct, though how much of that increase is a result of non-crystalline silicon PV remains to be seen.
So what about 2006? The Business Week article reports growth projections of only 5% for the new year. Rogol, on the other hand, predicts 30% growth for 2006 on the basis of another 4,000 tons of polysilicon inventory drawdowns and a further 4,000-ton increase in new polysilicon production. That would result in an 11% increase in polysilicon supply over 2005.
Some of these numbers don’t add up, right? How can PV shipments increase 40% in 2005 if the polysilicon supply grew by only 12.5%? How can 30% growth in 2006 be supported by an 11% increase in supply? There are several reasons. First, the polysilicon supply projections are for the entire polysilicon market, including the electronics sector. The amount used by the PV sector is growing at a faster rate than the amount used by the electronics sector, so the growth in polysilicon supply for PV is greater than I have indicated here (though only by a few percentage points). Second, PV manufacturers are using thinner silicon wafers and increasing the efficiencies of their solar cells. As a result, the amount of power that can be obtained from a kilogram of silicon has been rising. Combine these effects, and the end result is PV module shipments that grow at a higher rate than one might expect at first glance.
That said, I cannot quite make the numbers that Rogol provides add up to his 40% growth projection for 2005 or his 30% growth projection for 2006. Either I am missing something or Rogol is doing some handwaving. Still, based on his projections for silicon supply and consumption, I calculate expected growth for 2006 at 20–25%, not too far off of his estimate of 30% and far higher than the Business Week article’s 5%. |
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