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The soaring silver price will bring the photovoltaic industry "silver anxiety"?
01-10
According to data from Wenhua Finance, as of the close of trading on June 7, the price of the main silver futures contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange was reported at 5504 yuan/kg, an increase of 15% from the low of 4777 yuan/kg on March 8. In early May, silver's biggest gain was 23%, entering a technical bull market.
On June 9, funds in the domestic futures market flowed significantly into Shanghai Bank futures. According to data from Wenhua Finance, as of 11:30, the main contract of Shanghai Bank futures received a capital inflow of 1.03 billion yuan in the morning, becoming the commodity futures with the largest capital inflow that morning. Currently, the price of gold and silver is about 1:83. This means that the price of silver is still undervalued. In addition, according to the World Silver Association, the global silver supply in 2023 will be between 25000 and 26000 tons, with a gap of about 4000 tons and inventories at historically low levels. Industry insiders believe that silver prices may fluctuate upward in 2023.
Photovoltaic silver paste is one of the core auxiliary materials for the preparation of photovoltaic cells. It is mainly used to make photovoltaic cell electrodes, which can directly affect the photoelectric conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells and the output power of photovoltaic modules.
Take the current mainstream single-crystal single-sided PERC battery chip as an example, the battery chip cost composition, silicon chip accounted for about 75%, silver paste is the second highest cost of the material, accounting for about 8.5 of the total cost of the battery chip, accounting for 33% of the non-silicon cost of the battery chip. Photovoltaic cell technology is now moving from P-type to N-type, but the demand for silver is increasing instead of decreasing. This is because, whether it is TOPCon or HJT, whether it is the consumption of silver paste or the cost of silver processing, it is higher than PERC!
In addition, in addition to the field of photovoltaic cells, the demand for silver in the field of new energy vehicles is also expected to achieve considerable growth.
New energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, require silver in many component applications, including silver-plated wires and contacts. This depends on the silver has good conductivity, oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance. According to the statistics of the World Silver Association, each traditional internal combustion engine car needs about 0.5-0.9 ounces of silver, each hybrid car needs about 0.6-1.1 ounces, and each pure electric car uses about 0.8-1.6 ounces of silver. The World Silver Association report predicts that the demand for automotive silver will reach 61 million ounces in 2021 and rise to 90 million ounces in 2025, close to the demand for photovoltaic silver.
Compared to the balance of silver supply and demand over the past five years, the year-on-year excess of silver will show a downward trend, with supply and demand tightening in the overall direction. In the future, with the booming new energy economy, silver has the potential to increase its momentum in the upward trend. At present, the incremental demand for silver PV, for the improvement of the balance of silver supply and demand, in absolute quantity appears to be more limited, the next few years the probability is still dominated by more volatile investment demand. (Part of this article comes from the Internet)