【Haichuan Chemical Salary News】Amazing! Xinjiang Daquan New Energy’s 13,000-ton/year polysilicon plant was completed in one year

Electricity is cheap in Xinjiang, and for industries that rely 50% on electricity for their operations, many leading polysilicon manufacturers are shifting their production capacity there.

According to the expansion plans and production start announcements released by various domestic polysilicon manufacturers, the capacity increase in the second half of 2018 was 148,000 tons per year; by the end of 2018, China’s polysilicon production capacity would reach 408,000 tons per year, representing a year-on-year increase of 47.8%. The production capacity figures are higher than those expected at the end of August, as although the commissioning of expansion projects at certain companies was delayed, the planned output volume was higher than originally scheduled. The actual additional production capacity in the second half of the year amounts to 148,000 tons per year. This includes 60,000 tons per year from GCL in Xinjiang (commissioned on October 28), 25,000 tons per year from Tongwei in Inner Mongolia (commissioned on October 30), 25,000 tons per year from Tongwei in Sichuan (commissioned in November), 10,000 tons per year from Daquan in Xinjiang (commissioned in mid-October), 15,000 tons per year from Dongfang Hope (commissioned by the end of the year), and 5,000 tons per year from Asia Silicon Industry (commissioned by the end of the year). It is estimated that by the end of 2018, China’s total polycrystalline silicon production capacity will be around 408,000 tons per year, representing a net increase of 132,000 tons per year compared to the previous year. The new capacity added in 2019 was mainly concentrated in Xinte Energy with 36,000 tons per year, Daquan with 35,000 tons per year, Tianhong Ruike with 10,000 tons per year (as part of the planned capacity expansion), and Sunwoda LDK with 10,000 tons per year. By the end of 2019, the total capacity was expected to reach 509,000 tons per year. China’s three largest polysilicon manufacturers successively issued announcements regarding the start of production in the middle and late part of October: Xinjiang Daquan’s polysilicon 3B expansion project has been completed, and trial production began in mid-October. Project 3B will reach full production capacity in the first quarter of 2019, at which point the silicon production capacity will be 30,000 tons per year; once the bottlenecks are removed, it is expected that this capacity can be increased to 35,000 tons per year by the end of June 2019. Under the agreement between Dachan and the local power plant, once the 3B project reaches full capacity, the electricity price will be reduced by about 18% from its current level. It is expected that the average total production cost per kilogram (including depreciation) for both new and existing production capacities will drop to 7.5 dollars per kilogram once full capacity is achieved. The first phase of the Tongwei Baotou project in Inner Mongolia was completed after 12 months of construction, and it is set to go into official operation on October 30, 2018. The project has undergone dozens of optimizations and improvements in terms of the advancement of its process design and the reliability of system operation. Once it is in full production, over 70% of the products produced will be able to meet the requirements for P-type and N-type single crystals, thereby alleviating the shortage of high-purity crystalline silicon available in China. Thanks to the improvements in technology and processes, higher production efficiency, and reduced energy consumption, the product quality will continue to improve while the production cost will drop below 40,000 yuan per ton. Xinjiang GCL’s first-phase polysilicon project was officially put into operation on October 28, with the production capacity of this phase further increased to 60,000 tons. Once the GCL project in Xinjiang begins operating stably, its costs will be lower than those of existing polysilicon projects in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other regions. Xinjiang GCL takes advantage of its open-pit coal mine with a capacity of up to 600,000 units, thereby achieving lower power consumption thanks to optimized design. Thanks to advantages such as technology, talent, and funding, GCL-Poly’s more than a decade-old mature polysilicon technology will be fully utilized in the new facility. Coupled with Xinjiang’s low electricity costs, state-of-the-art domestically produced equipment, and the unreserved provision of talent from the Xuzhou facility, GCL-Poly in Xinjiang enjoys a significant cost advantage.

Photovoltaic industries are hit by tariffs abroad and have limited room for development at home; with such large-scale projects being launched, could there be an overcapacity issue?

Go to India, seek markets along the Belt and Road Initiative; the EU has also lifted its restrictions.

It shouldn’t, as processes and costs have decreased, **no subsidies are given anymore**

Apart from India, the Middle East is also a large market

There are very few photovoltaic power plants built in the Middle East. In Africa, due to the limited availability of **electrical grids, there is a strong demand for photovoltaic systems; however, investors are cautious, fearing that these power plants will become difficult to manage once they are built.