In May, Germany will implement the new subsidy plan that supports commercial and residential solar storage systems, and Japan has already announced that they are going to build the world’s largest solar storage system. According to EnergyTrend, a research division of TrendForce, in order to maintain renewable energy and enhance its reliability, the combination of power generation and energy storage is inevitable and will become the development trend in the future PV industry.

According to EnergyTrend, solar energy storage systems are not completely popularized at the present due to considerations regarding the additional cost as well as the optimum capacity of the energy storage systems. Medium/small sized solar storage systems (used in houses or offices) are usually based on ternary cells, and the cost of these cells may not drop in the short term. EnergyTrend estimated that the additional cost of energy storage systems could be 2 times greater than that of power generation systems; this excessive cost was one of the main reasons why such systems could not be popularized. In addition, the standard for the optimum capacity of energy storage systems has yet to be determined, which also influences customers’ intention to install such systems.

However, with solar energy storage systems, the power supply and stability of the solar generator could be significantly enhanced. Germany plans to issue a subsidy of 25 million Euros to residential and commercial solar energy storage systems that are installed after 5/1/2013. According to EnergyTrend, the subsidy plan was originally up to 60 million Euros, but the final version was reduced by over 50%. This may cause a delay in the promotion of solar energy storage systems.

As for the spot market, price still declined slowly in the Chinese market.  Multi c-Si wafer and mono c-Si wafer price both stayed flat due to Europe’s approaching anti-dumping and countervailing policy (though manufacturers have already started to negotiate the price for orders in May, they have adopted a conservative attitude); cell and module price also stayed flat due to the concerns about the decreased market demands that may occur in May. As for USD quotes, Cell and module manufacturers are still observing the market development, and the price of both cells and modules remained flat.