The PV front-runner project, which combines the advantages of “efficiency” and “cost”, will play an increasingly important role as PV moves toward parity. While the scale is expanding and the threshold review is becoming more stringent, the PV leader project will also be upgraded from “Parts Leading” to “System Full Leading”. Today, less than a month away from the end of the year, the fourth batch of photovoltaic front runners projects have gradually approached.
According to information previously disclosed by the National Energy Administration, the fourth batch of PV front-runner projects will be launched in the second half of 2018. Today, the year-end is less than a month. According to the practice of starting the first phase of the leader project, the schedule will be exhausted. What is the progress of the fourth batch of runners?The original intention of photovoltaic front-runners is to promote the application and industrial upgrading of advanced photovoltaic technology products, and implement them through the construction of advanced technology photovoltaic power generation demonstration bases and new technology application demonstration projects. Enterprises choose the products that achieve the “leaders” advanced technical indicators through market mechanisms. . Up to now, the PV leader project has been implemented for 3 years, and a total of 9 leading bases have been organized, with a total scale of 6.47 million kilowatts.
After the "531 New Deal", the PV market has shrunk, and PV front-runners have become the final scale development market. For all PV practitioners, after the release of the New Deal, as the first batch of subsidized PV projects to be released, the 2018 leader project approval situation is more worthy of attention. Wang Sicheng, a researcher at the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, pointed out that "if the fourth batch of PV front-runners re-distribute 11 GW, a total of 17.5 GW for two years, it is only implemented according to the original plan. This not only supports the market size, but also leads the market to high quality. development of."
In the front-runner project, the most attention is the conversion efficiency of components. In the first three batches of PV front-runner projects, Liang Zhipeng, deputy director of the New Energy and Renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration, also stressed that the construction of the photovoltaic leading base has promoted the technological progress of the photovoltaic industry and significantly improved the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic power generation. As the application-oriented leading base has increased by 2 percentage points than the market access standard required by the 2018 photovoltaic cell manufacturing specification, the photovoltaic technology leading base is 3.7 percentage points higher than the access standard.
“In the front-runner project, single-crystal PERC is favored, but the key to future products is the price/performance advantage. However, if the distributed market is released, the conventional technology will continue for some time,” said Wang Sicheng. High-efficiency batteries such as IBC will continue to move forward in the direction of improving battery conversion efficiency and reducing battery manufacturing costs. At the same time, more people are also expecting the fourth phase of the runners to showcase the application of newer battery technologies such as IBC, HIT and heterojunction. What can't be ignored is the N-type battery that is emerging. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance's statistics on the use of component technology in the third batch of front-runners, the application of double-sided components reached 2,634 MW, of which N-type double-sided components reached 848 MW.
As the demonstration project of photovoltaic to parity Internet, the leader base also undertakes the task of promoting the industrialization of new photovoltaic cell technology. For example, the cost of the supporting booster station, including the construction side, will be greatly reduced due to the scale. The entire centralized management and management and operation and maintenance costs will be reduced. In the eyes of many industry insiders, the key indicators for the leader base evaluation are lower LCOE and higher PR (energy efficiency ratio). For the application and development of new technologies, the annual bidding will put forward higher requirements. Given the popularity of double-sided components, the industry expects this trend to continue in the next batch of fourth-tier competitors, and the market share of double-sided technology will steadily increase.
Through the advancement of photovoltaic front-runners, the cost of photovoltaic power generation has also shown a significant reduction. With the continued downside of system-side costs and the control of non-technical costs, the leader is expected to push large-scale domestic centralized power stations to go online at a lower price. In the era of cheaper Internet access, the photovoltaic front runners will become the norm. However, if you want to become a PV front-runner, you must make a long-term layout in the view of the pattern, which fundamentally determines the strategic height of the PV companies.
In the second half of 2018, according to the provisions of the “531 New Deal”, the fourth batch of PV front runners will start in due course. However, in the opinion of some industry insiders, although the relevant work has already started, the results of the fourth batch of PV front runners are expected to be officially launched in the middle of next year. According to the media, there are more than 20 front-runner bases in 2019, and each base has a scale of nearly 497 MW. However, it is foreseeable that the fourth batch of front runners will be further improved in the classification, planning, supervision and management, incentive rewards and punishments of the base, so as to ensure the advanced nature of the project and the guiding nature of the industry.