Commerce Department Memo Opens up Gigawatts of Solar Supply

By Christian Roselund

On 2 May, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a memo that provided some incremental clarity on the process of the anti-circumvention investigation. Notably, the memo revealed that cells made from wafers sourced outside of China are not within the scope of the current investigation and therefore will not be subject to duties.

CEA has identified roughly 4 gigawatts of operational ingot and wafer capacity in Malaysia and Vietnam that can be used to make cells and modules for the U.S. market. In addition to this, JinkoSolar is currently ramping a 7-gigawatt ingot and wafer factory in Vietnam that can be used for U.S.-bound products that we expect to be fully online by 2023. LONGi is planning ingot and wafer capacity expansions in Malaysia this year as well.

CEA expects that this will only partially mitigate the current supply-demand imbalance in the U.S. market driven by the anti-circumvention investigation and a lack of available supply that is not subject to duties in China or potentially subject to duties in Southeast Asia. The position should improve in 2024 and 2025 as more wafer capacity comes online in Europe, India, and Southeast Asia, and other regions; however, many of the individual European wafer projects which have been announced are pending subsidies.

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Source: CEA Research