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2025 marked a watershed year for the global PV industry, transitioning from "scale expansion" to "quality enhancement." The industry exhibited a complex landscape characterized by "growing demand, overcapacity, accelerated technological iteration, and squeezed profitability." This report, based on data from the National Energy Administration, China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA), Global Environmental Research Network, and public data from leading companies, comprehensively reviews the 2025 business operations across the entire PV industry chain, objectively analyzes highlights and existing problems, and proposes future development plans, providing data support and decision-making references for subsequent business deployment.
In 2025, global PV industry demand continued to rise, but supply chain capacity redundancy led to intense competition, resulting in a pattern of "increased volume, weak pricing, and divergent profitability" across the industry chain. Global new PV installations for the year are estimated to reach 570-630GW, with China accounting for over 50%, continuing to lead the global market. China's output in all segments of the PV industry chain remained the largest globally, with production shares of polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules all exceeding 85%.
Looking at core business indicators, China's annual PV module output reached 514GW, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%. Module exports totaled approximately 233GW (January-November data), with export markets characterized by "stable growth in traditional markets and explosive growth in emerging markets." Technologically, N-type cell technology fully replaced P-type, with the industrialization of high-efficiency technologies like TOPCon and BC accelerating, and significant breakthroughs achieved in crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem cell efficiency. However, impacted by overcapacity, raw material price fluctuations, and trade barriers, gross margins across the industry chain faced pressure, leading to losses for leading companies and accelerated consolidation among smaller players.
In 2025, the polysilicon segment witnessed its first output decline since 2013. Industry supply structure continued to optimize, with prices showing a "bottoming out and recovery" trend.
Output and Capacity: Annual polysilicon output was 1.113 million tons, a year-on-year decrease of 29.6%. Global nominal polysilicon capacity reached 1337GW, with capacity redundancy exceeding double. Capacity utilization rates varied significantly, with leading companies maintaining over 80% while smaller players generally stayed below 50%.
Price Trends: Polysilicon prices fluctuated significantly throughout the year, gradually rising from a low of 34,400 RMB/ton (N-type material) at the beginning of the year to 53,200 RMB/ton by year-end, an annual increase exceeding 50%. The cash cost for leading polysilicon companies was approximately 25,000-30,000 RMB/ton, with total costs around 45,000-50,000 RMB/ton; year-end prices gradually approached total cost levels.
Key Players: Leading companies such as Tongwei, GCL, Daqo, and Xinte Energy dominated the market share, leveraging cost control capabilities and product quality advantages to maintain a dominant position in the industry consolidation.
The midstream segments (wafers, cells, modules) exhibited characteristics of "divergent output and technology-driven iteration," with N-type technology capacity being released intensively while traditional P-type capacity accelerated its phase-out.
Output and Capacity: Annual wafer output was 567GW, a year-on-year decrease of 6.7%. Global nominal wafer capacity reached 1088GW, highlighting severe overcapacity issues, with generally low industry operating rates.
Product Structure: The trend towards larger sizes became more pronounced, with 210mm and larger products capturing 75% market share. Thinning technology continued to advance, effectively reducing silicon consumption per unit product.
Profitability: Gross profit in the wafer segment was approximately -0.03 RMB/W, with profit margins continuously compressed due to the dual impact of overcapacity and rising raw material prices.
Output and Capacity: Annual cell output was 560GW, a year-on-year increase of 9.8%. Global nominal cell capacity reached 1157GW, with N-type cells accounting for over 70% of capacity.
Technology Roadmap: TOPCon technology became mainstream, capturing 71.1% market share. HJT held 3.3% market share, while BC cells accelerated their rise, with technologies like Longi's HPBC 2.0 and Aiko's ABC achieving mass production.
Cost Pressure: Silver prices surged over 100% during the year, directly increasing cell production costs as a core raw material for silver paste. Although silver-saving technologies like copper plating and silver-coated copper made progress, their large-scale application was insufficient to effectively hedge the cost pressure.
Output and Capacity: Annual module output was 514GW, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%. Global nominal module capacity reached 1343GW, with industry operating rates generally below 60%, and some companies even below 40%.
Price and Cost: Average module prices remained below 0.8 RMB/W throughout the year, leading to a vicious cycle of "volume-for-price." The production cost (excluding depreciation, including tax) for vertically integrated companies producing N-type M10 bifacial glass modules was 0.68 RMB/W. Bidding prices recovered steadily towards year-end, but profitability remained limited.
Product Structure: The share of high-efficiency modules continued to increase, with N-type modules capturing over 70% market share. Shipments of high-power modules (640W+) gradually increased but had not yet achieved economies of scale. Bifacial module penetration reached 55%, and tracker penetration reached 40%.
Downstream application demand continued to grow, with centralized and distributed PV developing in synergy. Emerging application scenarios such as PV-storage integration and BIPV expanded rapidly.
Installation Scale: From January to November 2025, China added approximately 274.9GW of new PV capacity, a year-on-year increase of 39.5%. Full-year additions are expected to exceed 300GW. Global new installations are estimated at 570-630GW, with China accounting for over 50%. By the end of 2025, China's cumulative installed PV capacity exceeded 1100GW, accounting for 30% of the nation's total installed power capacity.
Market Structure: In the domestic market, centralized PV accounted for 57.4%, primarily located in deserts and Gobi areas in Northwest China. Distributed PV accounted for 42.6%, with its full-year share expected to reach 45%. Urban and rural households, as well as industrial parks, became the main application scenarios for distributed PV, driven by the "1 kW per person" initiative promoting residential PV adoption.
Emerging Scenarios: Investment in PV-storage integrated projects surged 35% year-on-year. Grid-forming technology became central to the new power system, effectively addressing PV consumption challenges. The BIPV standard system gradually improved, with China's annual new BIPV installations exceeding 5GW. Emerging scenarios like photovoltaic hydrogen production and industrial green electricity procurement gradually took shape, driving new demand for the industry.
The domestic market was driven by the "dual carbon" goals, electricity market pricing reforms, and anti-involution policies, with demand continuing to be released. Policy-wise, six ministries including MIIT jointly addressed vicious competition, promoting the exit of outdated capacity. New energy grid electricity fully participated in market trading, marking the end of the fixed subsidy era. PV projects on agricultural and forestry land faced strict restrictions, while priority was given to projects in deserts and Gobi areas. Regionally, Northwest China remained dominated by centralized bases, while distributed PV was prominent in eastern coastal regions. Provinces like Shandong and Zhejiang established early warning mechanisms for distribution network capacity availability to regulate distributed PV development.
Overseas markets became a key growth driver for Chinese PV module exports, with export volumes continuing to rise, albeit facing pressure from escalating trade barriers. From January to November 2025, China's PV module exports reached approximately 233GW. Major export destinations included the Netherlands, Pakistan, Brazil, the UAE, and India, with Pakistan importing 16.3GW of Chinese modules, becoming the second-largest export destination. Regionally, the European market, driven by energy security policies, maintained growth above 20%. Southeast Asia emerged as a new manufacturing hub with rapidly growing demand. The revised US Inflation Reduction Act stimulated domestic capacity expansion, targeting a 40% module self-sufficiency rate.
Increased Concentration: Industry consolidation accelerated, with smaller companies gradually exiting due to cost pressure and technological lag, while the advantages of leading companies became more prominent. The top five module manufacturers accounted for over 60% of capacity. The "Big Five" (Longi, Trina Solar, JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Tongwei) dominated the market but generally faced losses, with total losses exceeding 28 billion RMB for the year. Notably, larger companies experienced greater losses.
Shift in Competition Model: The industry moved from "scale competition" to comprehensive "technology, brand, and service competition." Leading companies actively pursued high-efficiency technology paths: Longi focused on BC technology, Tongwei promoted full industry chain synergy, and Trina Solar developed PV-storage integration to create differentiated competitive advantages.
Escalating Trade Barriers: The EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) pilot covered PV modules. India extended anti-dumping duties on Chinese products until 2027. The US strengthened import barriers, increasing export costs and risks for Chinese modules, leading to a decline in average export prices and further compressing profit margins.
In 2025, technological iteration in the PV industry accelerated, with significant breakthroughs achieved in high-efficiency cell technology, auxiliary material innovation, and intelligent manufacturing. Technological innovation became a core driver for companies seeking breakthroughs.
High-Efficiency Crystalline Silicon Cells: BC cell module efficiency exceeded 26%, with technologies like Longi HPBC 2.0 and Aiko ABC achieving mass production. TOPCon cell conversion efficiency continued to improve, reaching over 25% in mass production. HJT cell technology was gradually optimized, with its cost gap relative to TOPCon narrowing.
New Cell Technologies: Crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem cell efficiency reached 33%, and single-junction perovskite cell efficiency exceeded 22%, though their commercialization progress lagged behind crystalline silicon technologies.
Increased Localization of Auxiliary Materials: The localization rate for silver paste exceeded 90%, and the substitution rate for tungsten diamond wire rose to 65%, effectively reducing reliance on imported raw materials.
Optimization of Encapsulation Technology: New encapsulation technologies like 0BB (no busbar) were gradually applied, enhancing module conversion efficiency while reducing production costs. The performance of auxiliary materials like POE encapsulants and double-sided glass continued to improve, extending module lifespan.
Adoption of Intelligent Manufacturing: Intelligent systems like ERP and OA were widely implemented in production management, improving efficiency and reducing labor costs. Module production underwent automation and intelligent upgrades, with leading companies achieving over 15% year-on-year improvement in production efficiency.
Upgraded O&M Technology: The global PV O&M market exceeded $12 billion, with AI predictive maintenance technology covering over 30% of installations, effectively reducing O&M costs and improving plant generation efficiency.
In 2025, while developing rapidly, the PV product business faced numerous challenges due to industry environment, market competition, and technological iteration, primarily concentrated in areas like capacity, profitability, costs, and trade.
Nominal capacity across all segments of the global PV industry chain significantly exceeded actual demand, with capacity redundancy over 200%. The module segment faced the most severe overcapacity. Although policies promoted the exit of outdated capacity and smaller players accelerated their exit, deep involvement of local government capital and complex interests led to a consolidation process slower than expected. Consequently, the industry remained trapped in a vicious cycle of "volume-for-price," with low operating rates and high inventory levels.
Impacted by the triple pressures of overcapacity, low prices, and high costs, the overall gross profit for the entire PV industry in 2025 was -0.08 RMB/W. Gross profits were negative across the polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module segments. Leading companies suffered significant losses: Tongwei Co., Ltd. expected full-year losses of 9-10 billion RMB, Longi Green Energy lost 6-6.5 billion RMB, and Trina Solar lost 6.5-7.5 billion RMB. Furthermore, module prices could not effectively transmit the pressure of rising raw material costs, leading to a continuously widening "price-cost gap" that further squeezed profitability.
Silver prices surged over 100% during the year, directly raising cell production costs, while silver-saving technologies were insufficiently scaled to offset this pressure. Key auxiliary materials like quartz crucibles and POE encapsulants still faced supply gaps, constraining capacity release. Polysilicon price volatility increased the difficulty of production planning and cost control for companies.
Major overseas markets like Europe and the US continued to strengthen trade protection policies. The EU's CBAM pilot covered PV modules, the US raised its target for local module self-sufficiency, and India extended anti-dumping duties on Chinese products. These measures increased export costs and market access hurdles for Chinese PV products. Simultaneously, competition in emerging markets intensified, with rising local capacity in Southeast Asia and India further squeezing the market share of Chinese products.
The pace of PV technology iteration accelerated. The ongoing substitution of N-type for P-type technology means PERC capacity faces shutdown or transformation, requiring companies to record significant asset impairments impacting current profits. The commercialization timeline for new technologies like perovskite remains uncertain, and companies betting too early on a specific technology route may face technological selection risks. Additionally, curtailment rates in Western China rose, highlighting insufficient grid regulation capacity. Many regions required distributed PV to achieve self-consumption rates of no less than 50%, impacting project economics and restraining downstream demand.
In 2025, the financing scale for the PV industry decreased by 40% year-on-year. The financing environment continued to tighten, with capital flowing towards technology-focused companies and industry leaders, making financing more difficult for smaller companies. Moreover, high inventory levels, extended accounts receivable collection periods, coupled with losses, created prominent cash flow pressures, restricting investment in R&D and capacity optimization.
Considering the 2025 business operations and industry development trends, the PV product business in 2026 will focus on "capacity reduction, quality improvement, cost reduction, market expansion, and technological enhancement." It will concentrate on high-efficiency technology routes, optimize business structure, address industry challenges, and promote high-quality business development.
Capacity Optimization: Focus on high-efficiency capacity, gradually phase out outdated P-type capacity, increase capacity utilization to over 85%, and alleviate overcapacity pressure.
Profitability Improvement: Through technological innovation, cost control, and product structure optimization, turn gross margins positive across all segments and gradually overcome losses.
Market Expansion: Consolidate traditional overseas markets, deeply cultivate emerging markets, promote localized overseas production to mitigate trade barriers. In the domestic market, focus on expanding into distributed PV, PV-storage integration, BIPV, and other emerging scenarios.
Technological Breakthroughs: Accelerate upgrades for high-efficiency technologies like BC and TOPCon, advance the commercialization of perovskite technology; scale up silver-saving technologies to reduce raw material costs.
Respond to anti-involution industry policies by actively participating in capacity integration, leveraging the polysilicon capacity integration platform "Guanghe Qiancheng" to optimize capacity layout. Focus on N-type high-efficiency capacity, increase investment in 210mm large-size wafers and TOPCon/BC cell production, gradually phase out inefficient PERC capacity, and improve capacity utilization. Strengthen inventory management, optimize production plans, reduce stockpiles, and minimize the risk of inventory devaluation.
Increase R&D investment, focus on upgrading high-efficiency cell technologies like BC and TOPCon, promote pilot and mass production of crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem cells. Expand the application of silver-saving technologies like copper plating and silver-coated copper to reduce dependence on silver costs. Optimize module encapsulation technology to enhance power output and conversion efficiency, creating differentiated high-efficiency products to improve pricing power. Strengthen R&D in intelligent manufacturing technology to enhance production automation and intelligence, reducing labor costs.
Establish a comprehensive cost control system, optimize supply chain management, sign long-term cooperation agreements with upstream raw material suppliers to lock in prices and reduce volatility risk. Promote localization of auxiliary materials to address supply gaps for items like quartz crucibles and POE encapsulants, reducing auxiliary material costs. Reduce per-unit product energy consumption, labor, and logistics costs through refined management and production process optimization, enhancing cost competitiveness.
For overseas markets, consolidate traditional markets like Europe and the Netherlands, deeply cultivate emerging markets like Pakistan, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. Optimize export product structure, increasing the share of high-value-added exports. Promote localized overseas production by establishing manufacturing bases in regions like Southeast Asia and the Middle East to circumvent European and American trade barriers. For the domestic market, focus on distributed PV and desert/Gobi centralized bases, expand into emerging application scenarios like PV-storage integration, BIPV, and photovoltaic hydrogen production, respond to the "1 kW per person" initiative, and increase market share in residential and commercial/industrial PV.
Optimize supply chain layout, establish strategic partnerships with core raw material and auxiliary material suppliers to ensure supply chain stability. Increase R&D investment in key auxiliary materials, promoting breakthroughs in localization for items like quartz crucibles and POE encapsulants to alleviate supply gaps. Establish a supply chain risk early warning mechanism to promptly respond to risks like raw material price volatility and trade policy changes.
Actively explore diversified financing channels, strengthen cooperation with financial institutions, and secure policy loans and special financing support. Optimize capital structure, reduce debt-to-asset ratio, improve cash flow management, accelerate accounts receivable collection, and alleviate cash flow pressure. Focus on core business, divest non-core assets, improve capital utilization efficiency, and ensure investment in R&D and capacity optimization.
In 2026, the PV industry is expected to gradually enter the later stage of capacity consolidation. Industry concentration will further increase, and the competition model will fully shift from "price competition" to "technology and quality competition." With the continued effect of anti-involution policies and ongoing capacity integration, industry prices are expected to stabilize and recover gradually, with profitability steadily improving. Technologically, N-type technology will continue to dominate the market, while new technologies like perovskite will gradually be implemented. Emerging scenarios like PV-storage integration and BIPV will become new drivers of demand growth.
Simultaneously, the industry will still face challenges such as escalating trade barriers, technological iteration uncertainties, and grid consumption pressure. The market consolidation process may continue for an extended period. Overall, as a core force in the global energy transition, the PV industry holds broad long-term prospects. 2026 is expected to mark a gradual emergence from the loss-making predicament of 2025, entering a new stage of high-quality development, providing crucial support for achieving global dual-carbon goals.
Data Sources: National Energy Administration, China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA), Capital Microscope, The Paper, Global Environmental Research Network, Sina Finance, and public data from leading companies.
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