General Manager YANG Liyou: The Rat Race in PV Industry Is a Double-edged Sword, Which Not Only Promotes Technology Iteration, But Also Intensifies the Elimination
By YANG Yang from ThePaper.cn
“The ‘rat race’ in PV industry is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it could directly promote technological progress and industry development; on the other hand, in an industry where technology is rapidly iterating, there is fierce competition and brutal elimination,” said Dr. YANG Liyou, General Manager of Jinneng Clean Energy Technology Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as “Jinergy”) during the recently held SNEC 2023. YANG said that ten years ago, nobody could completely tell how large-scale the PV industry can be and what role it will play in the future energy structure. But today, the answer is highly certain. PV will become the largest energy variety in the world.
China’s PV industry has emerged as a super competitive force, leading the world in technological innovation speed and capacity scale, and resulting in an increasingly heated competitive landscape. The ups and downs of the development history of the PV industry are interspersed with the rise and fall of many enterprises. YANG believes that from a macro point of view, the PV industry will continue to prosper and have a bright future. However, for a single enterprise, whether to continue to develop and grow, it depends on the enterprise’s multi-dimensional competitiveness.
In other words, the increment of the market is large enough, but it is not easy to get ahead in a sustained knockout game. Rapid technology iteration shortens industry-wide production line life cycles; especially in the context of overcapacity in the industry, cross-border capital continues to pour in, and asset risk is greater than late-mover equipment advantage, so new enterprises lacking technical reserves may face the dilemma of “lagging behind once putting into production” at any time.
The unique “family background” makes Jinergy have a unique competitive advantage. For a long time, due to the extremely fierce competition in PV manufacturing, it has always been the main battlefield for private enterprises. Jinergy, a member of Jinneng Holding Group, the largest energy enterprise in Shanxi Province and the second largest coal enterprise in China, is one of the few local state-owned energy enterprises active in PV manufacturing in China. In recent years, major central power enterprises have become the absolute main force of new energy investment, which is highly coincident with Jinergy’s coal purchaser, bringing good cooperation basis for its PV sector.
“Jinergy Holding Group is promoting the coal-PV synergy strategy and will strengthen the comprehensive strategic cooperation with the integrated energy groups, which will facilitate the PV sector to become bigger and stronger.” YANG said Jinergy’s shipment target in 2023 is 5GW. By the end of the year, Jinergy’s comprehensive production capacity will exceed 10GW, of which N-type cells and modules will account for more than 80%.
N-type cell technology, represented by TOPCon, HJT and XBC, has come to a critical moment to compete head-on with the current mainstream technology PERC. In terms of technical route selection, Jinergy synchronously develops TOPCon, HJT, Tandem and XBC technologies and carries out industrialization layout in TOPCon and HJT technologies.
Jinergy started the HJT pilot plant test project as early as 2016, and later became the first Chinese manufacturer to achieve HJT mass production in China. In 2019, Jinergy’s mass production efficiency of HJT cells exceeded 24.73%. However, TOPCon has taken the lead in a massive production expansion and Jinergy is constructing the N-type TOPCon cell project with an annual output of 4GW.
YANG said frankly, “TOPCon is currently the best market option at the right time. There is a logic behind TOPCon, which is popular in the market. From the comprehensive consideration of investment intensity, conversion efficiency, industry chain maturity, cost performance and other aspects, it is just a suitable technology. Of course, there will be more advanced technologies in the future to show greater market competitiveness, so we still need to follow up the R&D and industrial layout, and form the gradient strategy of “keeping one generation in mass production, one generation in pilot production and one generation in R&D”, to ensure that our Company can survive for a long time.”
“The large-scale industrialization of HJT is still a step away, but the industry cannot wait,” YANG told Thepaper.cn, “HJT is superior to TOPCon in power generation gain, conversion efficiency, bifaciality and temperature coefficient. However, from the perspective of commercialization, HJT’s comprehensive competitiveness needs to be improved, and the pain points are equipment cost and metallization. At present, Jinergyis improving the cost performance of HJT from the aspects of lamination, conductive silver paste, ITO target material and texturing additives, thus to further promote the HJT mass production cost to be even with that of PERC.”
