The rewarding Japanese market has attracted all of the top players from the Mainland, and they are breaking new records in delivering modules to the country. For the first seven months of the year,
Chinese Export Data Report (CEDR) has captured approximately 3.8GW of modules delivered to Japan by Chinese companies.Within the top 10 companies, seven are listed in the US. Ambitions of the Chinese tier-1 companies do not end with the module delivery, whether under their own brand or OEM services. At least three top delivery leaders, Trina Solar (TSL), JA Solar (JASO) and Canadian Solar (CSIQ), have plans to build solar plants in Japan. To date, Canadian Solar has offered the most details, and the company is leading based on the size of the pipeline and the level of development.
On September 23rd, Canadian released news of completing and connecting to the grid of its first 1.2MW solar farm, in addition to 405MW of late-stage pipeline the company has in Japan. Canadian declared that by the end of the year, 43MW of projects will be under construction. At this point, 150MW of projects have approval for grid connection and are in the construction permitting stage.
During the second quarter's conference call, Trina Solar presented a preview of its plans for Japan, with near-term objectives for plant development. The plan sees the Changzhou-based company develop around 116MW in Japan as early as 2015. JA Solar mentioned project objectives as well during one of its conference calls, but the company did not provide any details.
Another Chinese company, Znshine Solar, which is holding eighth place with 117MW, recently announced plans for delivery of 31MW of modules to Hamada solar plant in the Shimane province, a plant fully owned by ZNSHINE Group.
Canadian's announcement comes on the heels of a declaration made earlier this month by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) about canceling FIT authorizations for roughly 1.82GW of undeveloped solar capacity. The amount of canceled capacity equals 9.7% of all approvals made in 2012.
METI advised that another 351 applications, representing around 2.7GW, will fall under review, regardless of whether developers have secured land and equipment for each project. The outcome and continuing investigation are the result of a law requiring developers to secure both assets, within six months of the project's approval. Under those conditions, we see that Canadian Solar could accelerate efforts through the permitting stage and increase deliveries to Japan for the purpose of reaching its own goals. The company has an additional 500MW of early and mid-stage projects in the country, which could be moved to the construction stage in order to comply with the legal requirements.
Based on data from the first seven months of the year collected by CEDR, JA Solar leads Chinese companies with 461MW of modules delivered. Canadian Solar holds second place with 446MW, and Hanwha SolarOne and Trina complete the top four with 389MW and 371MW respectively.
The top ten have delivered to Japan over 2.6GW of modules, or 62% of the volume. Yingli Green Energy (YGE), ReneSola(SOL), Solargiga and Suntech are among the top ten. Wuxi Suntech is a module division of Shunfeng PV, a company with recently announced plans to establish 1GW of solar plants in Japan.
In addition to the above entities, CEDR identified another 25 companies as being responsible for 578MW and accounted for 700MW delivered by small, unranked players. The 366MW shipped by Japanese Kyocera's (KYO) Chinese subsidiary is not included in the statistic.
In comparison to 2013, during the entire year Chinese entities delivered around 4GW of modules. Estimates based on CEDR see a range of 7 to 7.5GW for the FYE 2014.
Chinese Export Data Report (CEDR) is a monthly publication of data in an Excel format, with PDF commentary including:• Weekly ASP for polysilicon, wafer, cell and module
• Module Average Declaration Price (GADP) by countries and & US-listed companies
• Module, cells and wafer deliveries by country and company (over 78 destinations)
• Watt efficiency averages for selected US-listed companies
• Imported polysilicon by volume price, source and buying Company/Group
• Taiwanese cell and module
