No. 86: Leading solar cell producers increase solar cell supply by 40% this year (July 3, 2013)

Business Trend:
Five leading solar cell producers including Sharp and Kyocera will increase solar cell supply 40% over the previous year this year. On July 1 last year, Japan enacted the system to purchase renewable energy, and demand for solar cell has been increasing dramatically for the past one year. The market involved in photovoltaic generation is estimated to increase 80% this year, and solar cell producers cannot keep up with the rapidly increasing demand. The five leading solar cell producers increased the total supply capacity 37% over the previous year to about 4,700,000 kW in 2013, of which 90% will be shipped domestically.

Producer	Supply in kW	Increased rate over the previous year (%)
Sharp	1,600,000	21.3
Kyocera	1,000,000	25.0
Panasonic	675,000	25.0
Solar Frontier	930,000	86.0
Mitsubishi Electric	500,000	85.1

      

According to a survey company in the U.S., Japanese photovoltaic generation related market will increase 77% over the previous year to about 1,970 billion yen in 2013 and become the world’s largest market, surpassing the Germany and the U.S. Foreign suppliers are strengthening their sales activities in Japan. They had 23% share in 2012 ad plan to increase the share to over 30% in 2013. Because some predict that the current booming solar cell business is going to create a bubble, companies involved in the photovoltaic business are required to make a difficult management decision.

Excessive concentration on photovoltaic generation is observed in Japan mainly because purchase price of photovoltaic generation in Japan is about two times higher in Germany. In fact, photovoltaic generation facilities account for 90% of all facilities approved by the government for renewable energy generation. Initial investment can be recouped in seven years, and generated electricity can be sold at the same price for 20 years. Accordingly, large companies and investment funds participated in the photovoltaic generation business one after another. As a result, transmission networks suffer from capacity shortage in some areas. At the same time, it is growing harder to secure land for photovoltaic generation today. 

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