MUNICH, May 21 (Xinhua) — The overseas photovoltaic market is now growing prosperously. In particular, the Southeast Asian market and the whole European market will likely see rapid growth in the PV sector this year, said Polaris Li, president of Jiangsu Seraphim Solar System Co., Ltd. (“Seraphim”) in an exclusive interview with Xinhua at the recent Intersolar Europe 2019.
The EU cancelled the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures on Chinese solar panels last year, which helped the company receive multiple orders from the European clients, Li added.
“Our shingled-cell modules have been already booked up to the end of this year, but we will not expand capacity easily,” said Li.
As the world’s first manufacturer of shingled-cell modules realizing large-scale production, Seraphim rolled out the Eclipse series solar modules in 2016, the first high-efficiency modules that use shingled-cell technology certified by TUV SUD in the world.
Li pointed out that the European PV market has recovered this year. It is conservatively estimated that the market capacity will reach around 20GW and the demands in the Netherlands and Spain will increase significantly.
As a matter of fact, Seraphim has started internationalization very early, with 80 percent of its sales coming from the overseas now.
In June 2018, the company supplied high-efficiency modules to Ukraine’s largest monumental solar project, which has been put into practical use at present.
Meanwhile, the solar market in Southeast Asia has boomed following the increased demand. Vietnam is undoubtedly the brightest star, according to Li.
For example, in November 2018, Seraphim signed new landmark supply agreements for two separate PV projects totaling 80MW in Vietnam.
Given increasing demands, Seraphim aims to double its sales this year, according to Polaris.
Regarding China’s policy of strictly controlling subsidized new solar power plants and further reducing related subsidy rate last May, Li said that with the subsidies falling and the grid-parity era coming, the domestic PV industry has come to an important stage of integration where the first-tier manufacturers accelerate the capacity expansion and the backward capacity has been continuously impacted.
Li noted that solar power is in a transition period from a subsidy-driven market to grid-parity era during 2018 to 2020 and is likely to achieve grid parity across the world by 2020.
Li said that the company has been well prepared for the future.
Back in 2017, Seraphim built a world-class in-house laboratory which has been accredited by five independent third-party certification bodies.
It is in this laboratory that Seraphim has developed the new product “Blade Bifacial” with low internal power loss, reduced hot spot potential, higher power output and improved reliability, which was released in the recent InterSolar. It is one of the most cost-efficiency products, which can meet the needs of non-subsidized projects both at home and abroad, by rapidly increasing the power output. (Contributed by Shao Li, edited by Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
