The photovoltaic industry has entered a new stage of large-scale, market-oriented development.
Recently, the National Energy Administration announced the statistics of the national power industry in the first half of the year. According to the total installed capacity, photovoltaic installed capacity has officially become my country's second largest power installed capacity, second only to coal power.
As an emerging industry, the continuous expansion of the photovoltaic market is always accompanied by technological innovation, and in many technical fields, solar cells are the top priority-photovoltaic cells are semiconductor devices that convert solar energy into electrical energy, and are the core of the middle reaches of the photovoltaic industry chain link.
Nowadays, photovoltaic cell technology is in the stage of rapid iterative upgrading, changing from traditional P-type PERC technology to N-type new cell technology, and N-type new cell technology uses TOPCon and HJT as the main route.
So, which photovoltaic cell technology is more advantageous at the moment? Which technology will overtake the car in a corner and become the big winner in the long run?
1. Bravely climbing the peak of efficiency, N-type battery technology "blossoms at both ends"
The photovoltaic industry is a highly competitive industry. In order to reduce the cost of electricity and improve the efficiency of mass production, various photovoltaic companies are constantly investing in research and development to seek new technological breakthroughs.
Although the P-type battery (PERC technology) still maintains its mainstream position in the industry due to the advantages of simple manufacturing process and lower cost, its dilemma is also very obvious: the current average mass production efficiency of PERC battery has reached about 23%, while the theoretical conversion efficiency limit is 24.5%.
In other words, the mass production efficiency of P-type batteries is close to the theoretical limit, and there is little room for improvement. Moreover, the P-type PERC cell also has the problem of light-induced degradation (LID), that is, the efficiency will decrease after the initial exposure. caused by.
As a result, major players in the industry are setting their sights on new technologies. At the previous 2023 Photovoltaic Exhibition, various photovoltaic equipment factories have increased the size of N-type equipment and provided solutions, revealing that the demand for N-type new battery technology is growing.
N-type new battery technology refers to the battery technology that uses N-type silicon wafers as substrates, and the two most important technical routes are TOPCon and HJT. These two technical routes have the advantages of high efficiency, low attenuation, low temperature coefficient, high double-sided rate, etc., and the theoretical efficiency limits are 28.7% and 27.5% respectively. in:
· TOPCon (Tunneling Oxide Passivation Contact) cells form a tunneling oxide layer and a polysilicon contact layer on the back of the N-type silicon chip, which reduces the metal contact recombination rate and increases the open circuit voltage and short circuit current.
· HJT (intrinsic thin film heterojunction) cell is to add a layer of amorphous silicon heterojunction on the N-type silicon wafer, which improves the open circuit voltage and fill factor.
At present, major photovoltaic companies at home and abroad have plans for both N-type technology routes, but they focus on different directions. It is foreseeable that TOPCon technology and HJT technology will compete for market share.
The main promoters of TOPCon technology are LONGi Green Energy, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar, JA Solar, etc., and the promoters of HJT modules include Tongwei, Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, JA Solar, Oriental Solar Risheng and others, it is not difficult to see that many companies have chosen to hedge their bets.
At present, N-type TOPCon technology has a first-mover advantage in production, and more and more photovoltaic companies have accelerated the pace of expansion of Topcon batteries. For example, on July 22, GCL Integration issued an announcement stating that the total amount of funds raised from issuance to specific objects is expected to be no more than 5.799 billion yuan, and the use of funds includes Wuhu GCL 20GW (Phase II 10GW) high-efficiency solar cells with a total investment of 3.885 billion yuan The project mainly produces TOPCon batteries.
This has also led to market expectations that TopCon batteries will be the first to achieve commercial mass production, seize the downstream market, and gain more shares in the future.
Source: Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Network
So, is there any possibility of overtaking HJT battery?
In fact, in my opinion, N-type HJT technology is the future development direction.
In fact, TOPCon technology is not a completely innovative technology, but an iterative technology that can be realized by adding 2 to 3 processes on the basis of PERC's original 8-10 processes. TOPCon technology is put into production quickly, precisely because it is more compatible with P-type PERC cells in terms of technology, and only needs to add some new equipment and materials, such as tunneling oxide layer equipment, polysilicon equipment, low-temperature silver paste, etc. However, these equipment and materials will increase production costs and affect yield and stability.
The mainstream process of HJT battery is only 4 steps (subdivided into 6 steps), which is greatly simplified compared with PERC and TOPCon, so it has higher production yield and efficiency improvement potential. For example, the superposition of perovskite and HJT can significantly enhance the conversion efficiency of HJT battery . Therefore, HJT technology is the revolutionary technology of photovoltaic cells.
The current question is, what should HJT battery do to overtake TOPCon battery in a curve?
2. The first element: breaking the shackles of cost
Whether the HJT battery can overtake in a curve, the primary factor is the cost.
Cost reduction and efficiency increase are always the main theme of the photovoltaic industry.
Since the second half of last year, the overall valuation of the A-share photovoltaic sector has continued to decline, and the China Securities Photovoltaic Industry Index has fallen by 33% in the past year. The most important reason behind this is that as photovoltaic companies have expanded their production, market competition has intensified, and cost pressures have gradually become prominent. Investors are not optimistic about the profit prospects of photovoltaic companies.
CSI Photovoltaic Industry Index
In a highly competitive market, both domestic and foreign photovoltaic markets can choose cheaper products. In this situation, companies with lower costs and lower product prices will be more competitive. At the recently held "Review of the Development of the Photovoltaic Industry in the First Half of 2023 and the Outlook for the Second Half of the Year", Wang Bohua, Honorary Chairman of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, pointed out: "One of the hot words in the first half of this year is price cuts."
Compared with P-type batteries, N-type batteries with higher mass production efficiency are undoubtedly more representative of the future, but cost is also the main factor currently restricting the mass production of N-type battery technology.
The cost of N-type batteries is higher than that of P-type batteries, especially the current equipment cost and material cost of HJT batteries are higher. According to the calculation of Soochow Securities, considering the non-silicon cost of cells, the total cost of HJT cells is 0.13 yuan/W for paste (12BB&50% silver-coated copper on the back), 0.04 yuan/W for target materials, and 0.08 yuan for equipment depreciation. Yuan/W and other manufacturing costs of 0.05 Yuan/W and other non-silicon costs totaling 0.3 Yuan/W, then when the price of silicon material is 100 Yuan/KG, and the thickness of silicon wafer is 120 microns—the total cost of HJT cells is about 0.67 Yuan/W , while TOPCon of the same thickness is about 0.64 yuan/W, and PERC is about 0.61 yuan/W.
Whether the cost can be reduced and the speed of cost reduction determine the future of HJT technology.
On the one hand, of course, it depends on the cost of silicon as the core raw material-at present, this part of the cost is relatively stable.
Oversupply is the current trend in the silicon market. In the first half of the year, the price of silicon material showed an overall decline, which was more than 78% lower than last year's highest price. In the second half of the year, there will be a lot of new planned production capacity. It is expected that the price of the industrial chain will not rise sharply in a short time.
Source: Guangzhou Futures Research Center
In this regard, Lu Jinbiao, an expert of the Expert Advisory Committee of China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said that in the second half of this year, polysilicon prices will have some corrections, but the range will not be large. The overall supply will remain sufficient and the price will stabilize at a reasonable low level.
The high cost of N-type HJT batteries comes from higher-purity silicon materials. In the future, as the thickness of silicon wafers continues to decline, silicon consumption per watt can make up for the price difference of high-purity silicon materials.
On the other hand, the cost of non-silicon materials is also the key to cost reduction, and the cost reduction space of HJT technology in these links is very imaginative.
This part mainly includes silver paste cost and equipment cost. With the advancement of the upstream technology of the cell industry, the localization of low-temperature silver paste has been basically realized. Zheshang Securities Research Institute pointed out that with the continuous introduction of silver-coated copper, double-sided microcrystalline, and 0BB technologies into mass production, and the further reduction of single-GW equipment investment, HJT has great potential for cost reduction in non-silicon aspects.
In the future, when cost is no longer a disadvantage, the progress of HJT battery industrialization will definitely accelerate.
3. Collaborative innovation of the industrial chain, penetrating the red ocean and entering the blue ocean
Solving the cost problem requires collaborative innovation of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain to break through the difficulties of process and equipment supply.
Process optimization and equipment improvement are the best means to control costs. For example, in June, Robotec shipped the first single GW copper electroplating equipment, increasing the production capacity of a single copper electroplating equipment from 600MW to 1GW, and reducing the floor area by 20%, which will obviously optimize photovoltaic cell manufacturers Cost of production.
At the same time, if N-type HJT batteries want to expand production on a large scale and catch up with N-type TOPCon batteries, they must also solve the problem of equipment supply. According to the research of Shanghai Nonferrous Network SMM, at present, there are only 4 companies in China that can mass produce HJT core equipment and complete line equipment, and the production capacity of HJT equipment is relatively tight.
Photovoltaic equipment enterprises in the middle reaches of the industrial chain expand equipment production capacity and improve equipment technology is the key to breaking the situation. Domestic enterprises that have realized the supply capacity of HJT complete line equipment, such as Maiwei, Jiejia Weichuang, etc., should pay more attention to breakthroughs in core equipment technology, including PECVD, which accounts for more than half of the equipment investment.
In any case, under the current fierce competition in the industry, it is an inevitable choice for photovoltaic companies to develop a way out of HJT batteries. At present, more and more photovoltaic enterprises have begun to join the investment and construction army of HJT battery production line. According to the recent survey by Shanghai Nonferrous Network SMM, there are about 46 domestic companies planning to deploy HJT battery production lines, and more than 59 project bases. The planned production capacity of domestic HJT batteries has reached more than 308GW, an increase of 163% compared with the planned scale at the beginning of the year. The company with the largest capacity planning is Huasheng, followed by Risen Energy. In the future, it is expected that many leading companies will enter the army of HJT battery expansion.
Source: Shanghai Nonferrous Network
And the growth in demand from downstream will definitely promote technological iteration and innovation of upstream companies to compete for more customers. SMM predicts that 2024 will be a big year for HJT battery capacity expansion, and it is expected to have a unique competitive advantage in the N-type battery market thereafter. HJT is expected to mass-produce cells with a cost per watt lower than that of PERC/Topcon before 2025 and become the mainstream of the market, and combine with the advantages of perovskite between 2027 and 2030 to greatly promote its market share.
It is foreseeable that with high-efficiency N-type photovoltaic products as the driving force, the upstream and downstream of the photovoltaic industry chain will usher in a new round of strong development opportunities.
However, in this round of waves, photovoltaic companies need to return to the attributes of science and technology, affirming that innovation is more important than expansion. The sooner companies break through the limitations of new battery technology, the more opportunities they have to stand on the wave.
Source: Songuo Finance