Polysilicon approval or will be lifted

Photovoltaic expansion has become increasingly fierce. Several polysilicon projects that were temporarily suspended due to “No.38 Document” are expected to receive a “batch” within the year.

“If there is no new project approval this year, the supply gap for polysilicon in the country will exceed 60% in the next two years.” On April 6, an executive from a polysilicon company in the central region pointed out that companies such as Suntech, TRW, and CSI Artz The output of more than 1G watts, coupled with the entry of many new downstream photovoltaic manufacturers, in 2011 whether the domestic polysilicon self-sufficiency rate can reach 50% is still unknown.

In September 2009, the State issued “No. 38 Document” (“Some Opinions on Restraining Part of Overcapacity and Duplicate Construction and Leading the Healthy Development of Industries”), and stopped the approval of polysilicon expansion projects, but the “Polysilicon Industry Access Requirements” The end of January this year released several stagnant polysilicon projects.

In mid-March, Zhu Gongshan, chairman of the board of directors of GCL-Poly, the largest polycrystalline silicon producer in China, announced that in the silicon materials business, the company will expand its production capacity based on the existing polysilicon and wafer production capacity. It is expected that the polysilicon production capacity will reach 46,000 tons by the end of 2011.

The capacity expansion plan is not only unique to GCL-Poly. LDK, MCC, and Daquan have similar arrangements.

“China Metallurgical has plans to expand polysilicon production capacity and plans to have a production capacity of 10,000 tons in 2011.” said Zhang Zhaolong, Vice President of China Metallurgical Group, China's polysilicon production is not sufficient to meet domestic demand, so there is no excess capacity, and the current state of the new energy The support is increasing.

At present, the excessive planning of local governments and the high energy consumption during the production of polysilicon have caused heated disputes over whether or not polysilicon will be released. Zhang Zhaolong believes that although the production of 1 ton of polysilicon consumes more than 10,000 kilowatts of electricity, the use of polysilicon has a relatively high energy efficiency. Therefore, "polysilicon is not a high-tech industry."

The above-mentioned central polysilicon executives believe that there is indeed a problem of high energy consumption and no closed-cycle equipment in the small polysilicon plants with a domestic scale of less than 3,000 tons, but the “Polysilicon Industry Access Requirements” has made explicit provisions on this, plus WACKER, Deshan, OCI and other international big companies are all expanding their production. "The domestic cost is higher than the international big factory by about 20 US dollars/ton. If there is no expansion, there is no any competitiveness at all."

The aforesaid central polysilicon company stated that there should be several polysilicon projects approved by the National Development and Reform Commission this year. In addition to the requirements for approval of polysilicon industry access requirements, approved projects should be selected among companies with better qualifications, and the possibility of new construction and expansion at the same time is extremely high.