Growth for the Chinese Thin-Film Solar Cell Market
In recent years, Solar industry in China had witnessed a rapid development. China's solar cell output only accounted for 8.1% of the total global output in 2005, but the ratio sharply increased to 17.1% in 2006. And in 2007, Solar cell output in China was totaled at 1,088MWp, accounting for 27.2% of the total global output, becaming the largest solar cell manufacturing country in the world.
However, Solar cell application market in China is still developing slowly. In 2007, only 20MWp or 1.84% of china's total solar cell output was consumed locally, and the rest was exported to other countries or areas.
Unlike the normal solar cell, the manufacturing of thin-film solar cell is not affected by the lack of raw materials such as polysilicons. Therefore, it attracted more attentions, especially from China. China's thin-film solar cell output increased sharply during the period of 2007 to 2008. More and more manufacturers in China had expanded their production capacity: Shenzhen Topray Solar, the a-Si (amorphous silicon) thin-film solar cell manufacturer had raised a total fund of RMB550 million from the stock market in 2008, for the constructional purpose of 25MW a-Si thin-film solar cell project and 15MW crystalline silicon solar cell project.
Moreover, On May 27th 2008, Zongyi Group and Jusung Engineering from South Korea had agreed to co-establish a production line of 26MW thin film solar cell, other solar cell manufacturers such as Sunvim Group, Fengfan, LDK Solar and Baoding Tianwei Group all performed actively in the thin-film solar cell market in 2008.
The Government also pays great attention on solar power developments, and has released a series of favorable policies of solar energy such as the subsidy of rmb4.00/kh for two solar power generating stations locate at Shanghai and Inner Mongolia respectively.
