Research and Development Forecast of China Photovoltaic (PV) Glass Market, 2013-2017

For recent years, the comprehensive competitiveness of China’s PV industry has been continuously improved and the whole PV industrial chain has showed the rapid development trend. China has formed the relatively complete solar PV industrial chain including the production of polycrystalline silicon, manufacturing of solar cells and modules, the installation of PV system and the related supporting industries. 

In 2012, the cumulative PV installed capacity was 8.3 GW in China; as of the end of August 2013, the PV installed capacity reached 8.98 GW in China; it is estimated that the PV installed capacity will reach 9.5 GW by 2013 with new increase of 1.2 GW.

On the premise of the proportion of crystalline silicon cells in PV is 85%, the demand volume for the crystalline silicon cell will be 1.02 GW by 2013. According to the 12th-Five-Year Plan, after 2014, China will increase about 10 GW of PV installed capacity per year, and then, the crystalline silicon cell will have the average demand of 8.5 GW. As per 100 w of cell module will use about 1M2 of patterned glass, China’s ultra-white patterned glass will exceed 102 million M2 by 2013; according to the 12th-Five-Year Plan, China’s average demand volume for ultra-white patterned glass will reach 850 million M2 in the future few years.

Compared with the developed countries, China’s thin-film cells have very low ratio of about 6% in the total PV output. If calculating by the new increased PV installed capacity of 1.2 GW in 2013, the demand volume for thin-film cells will be 0.072 GW in this year; if calculating by the 100W of thin-film cells with 1.5 M2 of TCO glass, China’s TCO glass demand volume will be 10.8 million M2 by 2013. According to the 12th-Five-Year Plan, China will have the demand volume for TCO glass of about 90 million M2 in the future few years.

In China, there is strong demand for PV anti-reflective glass; the proportion that PV cells use the anti-reflective glass is expected to rise to 80% by 2015 from 35% currently; it is estimated that the domestic demand volume will be respectively 68.67 million and 102.14 million M2 during 2013 to 2015, but the proved production capacity of domestic enterprises is limited: the effective production capacity was respectively 27 million, 38 million and 54 million M2  during 2011 to 2013, which was less than the market demand volume in the same year.

Research and Development Forecast of China Photovoltaic (PV) Glass Industry, 2013-2017, issued by Huidian Research, mainly makes the depth market survey of the market status quo of PV industry and analyses the status quo of global and domestic markets, the major products and major PV glass enterprises at home and abroad; meanwhile, it makes the analysis and forecast of the PV industry future, which provides the decisive reference for enterprises to know and invest the field.