On April 11, a seminar on crystalline silicon photovoltaic module size was held in Beijing under the guidance of China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) and sponsored by the Standardization Technical Committee of CPIA and China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute. Leading PV companies such as Longi, JinkoSolar, JA, Trina, AT&S, Orient Sunrise, and Tongwei, as well as industry chain-related companies such as Follett Glass, Xinyi PV, and Sany Silicon Energy, a total of 15 companies participated in this seminar.
In 2022, China’s photovoltaic industry hit another record high, both in terms of manufacturing end production value, product output, and total exports and new installed capacity. However, along with PV technology progress and the cost pressure of grid parity, PV module technology to large size, high power development, a variety of specifications of products, but also brought the problem of module size is not uniform. In particular, in 2023, some photovoltaic manufacturing enterprises launched “rectangular silicon wafer”, resulting in the module size has tended to unify once again face new challenges, but also brings the industry again into the size of confusion caused by the in-roll competition, the corresponding cost of rising worries.
China photovoltaic industry association deputy secretary-general Jiang Hua said in his speech: “module size is not uniform will cause the entire industry chain upstream and downstream raw materials link manufacturing costs, as well as increase the terminal power station design costs, supply risk.”
Specifically, for upstream enterprises, the non-uniformity of module size will bring capacity switching and incompatibility loss to wafer, cell, PV glass and other production manufacturers, as well as increased inventory costs. For downstream enterprises, in order to adapt different sizes of modules electrical and load performance parameters, bracket and inverter manufacturers have to match and develop different products. For the client, for different components to be designed separately, increasing the design cost; secondly, when the supply enterprise can not meet the supply demand, will not be able to switch other enterprise products, increasing the supply risk.
For the standardization of photovoltaic module size this hot spot, the focus of the issue, the participating leading enterprises have a wide consensus, but also have raised a higher expectation of the trend of module size standardization, module product size standards need to be unified.