CEA has predicted that solar module prices may increase from around $0.8/W to $10/W currently to $0.11/W by the end of 2025 and likely up to $0.13/W by 2027.
“Despite government controls restricting expansions via China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which released stricter rules for new PV capacity investment and added additional requirements and heightened standards to existing PV factories, government action is not impacting the oversupply already present in the market,” a CEA spokesperson told pv magazine. “Suppliers are responding to low prices by cutting costs and idling capacity, but financials remain a key concern for all suppliers seeking to outlast peers in the industry.”
CEA analysts said a key question remains as to when massive supplier consolidation and capacity closures will hit the market. After a year of prolonged price declines and at-cost or below-cost production, they expect suppliers to exit the industry in 2025.
“However, the availability of mature tool providers and the Chinese market's ability to quickly build, tool, and ramp up new production capacity are ongoing concerns for PV suppliers. This dampens the prospects for a substantial price increase, as many production nodes have a relatively short time to market,” the spokesperson said. “Reactivating some polysilicon plants may be relatively short if modern lines are mothballed during supplier closures and there is another price crunch.”
CEA said that China currently has 1,040 GW of operational module capacity, up from 996 GW at the end of 2024 but below its 2025 outlook of 1,218 GW. Heterojunction (HJT) accounts for about 7% of all cell manufacturing capacity, with 97 GW of operational factories, while back contact (BC) – mostly tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) BC – makes up around 5%, or 73 GW.
CEA noted that globally, these technologies represent a much smaller installed share – likely under 1% each – due to the long dominance of passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) over the past five to 10 years and the recent emergence of TOPCon as the industry’s mainstream product.
“The emergence of price-competitive HJT for utility applications is more recent, and while there are back-contact products available for utility-scale applications, HJT and BC prominent use cases remain distributed generation markets,” the spokesperson stated.
In its first-quarter solar report, CEA revealed that project costs using n-type products now set the baseline, as passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) technology phases out of the market. Only markets with trade barriers on China, such as the United States, still use a mix of PERC, n-type, and other technologies.
