As a material for photovoltaic module production, photovoltaic glass is mainly used to protect the solar cell from various adverse environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity and external force impact, while not affecting its absorption of light energy. It is an important part of the solar generator.
PV glass industry chain:
Source: Huachuang Securities
According to different structures, solar cell modules are mainly divided into single glass modules and double glass modules. The single glass modules are usually composed of five layers of structures from top to bottom, such as photovoltaic glass, packaging adhesive film, cell chip, packaging adhesive film, and backplane. They have high weather resistance and are suitable for harsh environments such as desert and Gobi.
The double glass module is composed of two photovoltaic glasses, packaging adhesive film and solar cell silicon wafer through high temperature lamination by a laminator to achieve double-sided photoelectric conversion and increase the light receiving area of the battery.
Different from traditional photovoltaic modules, double glass modules replace the backplane (mostly organic composite materials) and aluminum frame of general modules with reinforced glass. The big difference between double glass modules and general modules is that the front and back of the modules are glass encapsulated, changing from "3.2mm glass+backplane" to "2.5mm front glass+2.5mm back glass".
Compared with single glass module, the consumption of photovoltaic glass for double glass module is significantly increased, and the demand for photovoltaic glass will increase from 6.08t/GW to 9.49t/GW, an increase of 56.25%.
The double glass module significantly increases the consumption of photovoltaic glass for a single module.
The advantage of the double glass double side module is that it can significantly improve the power generation efficiency without increasing the cost. First of all, in the battery sector, the current mainstream p-PERC batteries, as well as the potential N-type single crystal and HIT batteries, are naturally compatible with double-sided battery technology, without incurring additional costs.
The photovoltaic glass industry is highly concentrated, presenting a duopoly pattern, and is expected to further expand its market share.
It is expected that the demand for double glass modules and large size silicon chips will stimulate the demand for photovoltaic glass to improve rapidly, and the demand for photovoltaic glass is expected to increase significantly year-on-year in 2022.
