In the last two years, China’s 10 IPOs have raised nearly $2 billion to meet the world’s growing demand for PV related products and services. With these highly prominent initial public offerings, China’s solar energy industry is poised to make a major impact on worldwide polysilicon capacity and solar cell production.

In 2008, China has become the number one PV producer in the world. However, China’s domestic market for PV installation is quite small. About 98 percent of its production is shipped overseas. By the end of 2007, China’s accumulative installation was only 100MW, less than 1 percent of the worldwide installation.

Even though China government has enacted a number of national renewable energy policies, less emphasis has been put on solar energy. SEMI has joined forces with China’s leading PV companies and formed the SEMI China PV Committee.

The Committee has recently initiated a PV industry advocacy program to collectively address issues facing China’s PV industry and to petition for more government support in the areas of legislation, policy, and financial support, with the aim of stimulating domestic demand while overseas market weakens.

SOLARCON China 2009 will be held concurrently with SEMICON China from March 17-19, 2009. SEMI China is committed to make SOLARCON China the leading PV expo in China. More than 20 government delegations have already accepted SEMI’s invitation to take part in this event.

China’s emerging solar equipment industry
In addition to polysilicon, solar grade wafers and solar cells and modules, China will also benefit from an emerging domestic equipment industry representing the entire production process including thermal process, plasma etch, wet bench, PECVD and semi-automated screen printing.

Supporting equipment and component vendors are also expected to emerge in China. The business model for many of these new solar energy firms, such as Suntech, Yingli and Jing’ao, follow a vertically integrated path. Some companies, such as LDK or CSUN, however, specialized in a limited number of steps in the supply chain.

Recently, Chinese PV product manufacturers have increased their focus on thin-film silicon PV modules, a sub-area that is attracting significant interest.

Source: SEMI, USA