Recently, a large order has been traded in the field of heterojunction cells.
According to the announcement, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology signed an important contract with Huasheng New Energy: to sell 1000MW of A-grade G12 heterojunction cell products to Huasheng New Energy. According to the price of Sobi Consulting, the order amount is more than 450 million yuan.
As a dark horse enterprise that crosses borders into the photovoltaic field, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology has firmly chosen the heterojunction route since its inception.
On December 1, 2022, Liansheng 8GW heterojunction cell project officially signed a cooperation agreement with Danling County Government. After signing the contract, ground was broken in 18 days, the plant was capped in 76 days, and the first piece was completed within 7 months. Seven months after it was put into operation, it successfully signed a 700MW order, and a month later, it won another 1,000MW order. Such an astonishing speed of advancement is unparalleled.
The landing of such a large-scale order indicates that heterojunction cells have broken through the bottleneck of mass production and officially entered a period of rapid growth.
Since 2023, the PV industry is rapidly switching from p-type to n-type. According to the statistics of Sobi Photovoltaic Network, in the first quarter of 2024, the proportion of n-type products in the calibration of photovoltaic modules has exceeded 70%, achieving an unexpected jump.
Compared with PERC cells, n-type technology is showing a trend of diversification, forming a "three-legged" competitive landscape of TOPCon, heterojunction and XBC. In contrast, heterojunction technology has higher conversion efficiency, fewer processes, higher bifaciality, lower temperature coefficient, and greater efficiency improvement space, which has been favored by many practitioners, especially enterprises that have crossed over into the photovoltaic sector, and most of them choose to bet on the "heterojunction camp".
It is worth noting that in the recent centralized procurement bidding of central state-owned enterprises such as Huaneng and Datang, heterojunction modules have begun to be classified as independent bids, rather than according to "n-type". Behind this change is undoubtedly the affirmation of the breakthrough made by heterojunction in reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
The cost of equipment and non-silicon both declined
The cost problem used to be an insurmountable mountain on the road to mass production of heterojunction cells.
The production process of HJT cells mainly includes cleaning and texturing, amorphous silicon thin film deposition, TCO film deposition and metal polarization. Among them, amorphous silicon thin film deposition is the core link, and the equipment cost accounts for more than 50%. In the early days, the heterojunction production line relied heavily on imported equipment, and the initial investment cost was as high as 8-1 billion yuan/GW. With the continuous deepening of the technology research and development of domestic manufacturers, domestic equipment has gradually emerged, and the equipment cost of heterojunction production line has been significantly reduced.
According to the person in charge of R&D technology of Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology, the average price of equipment in the current heterojunction industry has dropped to 300 million yuan/GW. In the past two years, a number of GW-level heterojunction mass production lines have been completed and put into operation, and the scale effect has become increasingly prominent, attracting more leading equipment companies to enter the game. In the future, it is expected that the equipment cost is expected to be further reduced, reaching the level of 250 million yuan/GW.
In the metallization process, photovoltaic silver paste is a key auxiliary material for the preparation of electrodes, and its cost accounts for about 40% of the non-silicon cost of the cell. Due to the high hydrogen content of amorphous silicon thin films in heterojunction cells, the temperature of the production process is required to not exceed 250°C, so it is necessary to use high-temperature silver paste. In addition, heterojunction cells have a double-sided structure and both sides need to use pure silver, resulting in high silver consumption, which further increases the cost of silver paste.
In order to reduce the dependence on precious metals, Liansheng introduced the 0BB+ silver-clad copper process, which greatly reduced the silver consumption of heterojunction cells, so that the slurry cost has been equal to or even lower than that of TOPCon. With the large-scale application of electroplating copper process, silver paste can be completely replaced, which fundamentally solves the high cost of metallization, which has become one of the advantages of the development of heterojunction technology.
The critical point of cost performance is coming, and industrialization is accelerating
In addition to cost, the conversion efficiency of cells and modules, which once lagged behind, has also been significantly improved recently.
The latest study points out that the theoretical limit efficiency of heterojunction based on nanocrystallization process can reach 29.2%, which is higher than that of TOPCon bifacial Poly route of 28.7%. HJT cells have a simple structure, are highly adaptable to the interfaces of various functional layers, and can effectively control the concentration of internal defects by matching the unique low-temperature process and minimalist process, and are easy to obtain high conversion efficiency.
Taking the 0BB high-efficiency heterojunction cell developed by Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology as an example, the product adopts double-sided microcrystalline and low-temperature process technology, which has the characteristics of excellent weak light response and low temperature coefficient. Its highest bifaciality rate can reach 95%, the cell yield rate is as high as 98.7%-99%, and the mass production conversion efficiency has successfully exceeded the 26% mark.
Compared with traditional amorphous silicon films, microcrystalline silicon films have better light transmittance, lower defect density, higher doping efficiency and higher electrical conductivity. Combined with advanced technologies such as large-size silicon wafers, busbar-less and half-cell technologies, the batch shipment power of Liansheng PV G12-0BB high-efficiency heterojunction modules can reach 730W, which is at least 15W ahead of TOPCon modules.
In addition, the temperature coefficient of HJT modules is only -0.26%/°C, which is lower than that of TOPCon modules of -0.30%/°C, which means that in high-temperature environments, HJT modules have less power loss. In the simulation calculations carried out in many regions around the world, heterojunction modules have shown higher power generation gain, and the LCOE advantage is obvious, which has attracted wide attention from end customers.
According to the forecast of the relevant person in charge of the marketing and sales of Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology, the global installed capacity of DC side PV will reach 500GW in 2024, of which n-type will account for 85-90%, and the market share of heterojunction products is expected to increase to 8-10%, that is, the shipment scale of 40-50GW.
The industry generally believes that 2024 is a critical year for the explosion of heterojunction cell production capacity. At the same time, the industry is still facing challenges such as the high cost of targets and the difficulty of introducing new technologies. Only when more enterprises join the field of heterojunction and jointly expand the scale of production capacity can we further promote the improvement of the technical benefits of heterojunction.
The faucets joined forces, and heterojunction declared war on the 740W+ era
On March 10 this year, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology convened 10 leading heterojunction enterprises to jointly initiate the "China Photovoltaic Solar Energy High Efficiency 740W+ Club", which clarified the goal of coordinated development, integrated the supply chain, brand building, technical collaboration, sales market and other links of the 740W + efficient solar energy industry, and promoted the photovoltaic industry to quickly enter the 740W+ era.
Wang Xin, chairman of Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology, said that as a new technology, heterojunction has few players, the entire industrial chain is not perfect enough, and the overall investment cost is high. Through the industry's "group heating", open up the core links such as R&D, manufacturing and application, and further expand the market space, heterojunction will subvert the existing photovoltaic industry chain to a certain extent.
As a dark horse enterprise that crosses the border into the photovoltaic field, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology has firmly chosen the heterojunction route since its inception, and has greatly reduced the decentralized utilization of resources by virtue of the late-mover advantage of "mass production at the beginning", so as to quickly promote the implementation of capacity planning and compete with old battery manufacturers.
It is understood that the technical team members of Liansheng HJT business are mainly composed of technical talents and operational talents from industry benchmarking leaders, all of whom have many years of front-line production experience in the photovoltaic field. By the end of 2023, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology has applied for more than 40 patents in the field of heterojunction technology.
At present, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology has established two large-scale heterojunction cell project production bases in Danling County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province (8GW) and Tongzhou District, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province (12GW), with a total production capacity of 20GW. Among them, the first phase of the 3.8GW production line of the Meishan project has been fully put into production, and by the end of July, the second phase of the 5GW production line will also be fully put into use.
In 2024, Liansheng Photovoltaic Technology will strive to occupy 15%-20% of the domestic heterojunction cell market share and achieve the shipment target of 8GW. At the same time, Liansheng will work closely with industry alliances to actively promote the coordinated development of the upstream and downstream of the heterojunction industry chain, and jointly move towards the future of 740W+ power.
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