Featured in More than just a number – 03-2018

From the top

Polysilicon and wafer manufacturers ranking: PV demand reached record levels in 2017, with global installations surpassing 100 GW for the first time ever. Few in the industry expected deployments to hit this level, piling the pressure on to the supply chain. Armed with polysilicon and wafer manufacturer ranking data supplied by IHS Markit, pv magazine delves into the past year’s upstream landscape.

By

Mark Hutchins

13 Mar 2018

Wacker Chemie’s 20,000 metric tonne polysilicon facility in Tennessee, US. | Image: Wacker Chemie

After being hit hard by oversupply conditions in the second half of 2016, polysilicon suppliers approached the following year cautiously, on the back of lower demand expectation. These expectations were of course proved wrong, as the year played out to be another record breaker in terms of global installations. “The biggest difference between 2016 and …

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