Chinese Solar Panel Makers Posting Big Numbers

Two of China’s solar panel manufacturing heavyweights, JinkoSolar and Longi, have revealed recent module shipment figures – and they are eye-popping.

Both companies were in the top 5 for global panel shipments in 2021, and both have again been busy cranking out modules during 2022.

JinkoSolar Q2 2022 Results

On Friday, JinkoSolar announced its unaudited financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2022. The company states its quarterly shipments were 10,532 MW (10,183 MW for solar panels and 349 MW for cells and wafers), up 25.5% sequentially, and up 102.4% year-over-year.

The quarter wasn’t without its challenges, including sky-high polysilicon prices.  And in terms of the current quarter, JinkoSolar recently had to curtail manufacturing operations at its Sichuan facilities. Local authorities imposed province-wide power rationing measures due to a drop in hydropower generation resulting from a heatwave and ongoing drought. The direction came into effect on August 15 and was still in place as at August 22. Rationing is expected to ease next month as temperatures drop.

Given current and expected supply chain and market conditions, the company has adjusted its capacity expansion expectations for this year to reach 65GW for panels, 55GW for cells and 60GW for wafers by the end of 2022.

JinkoSolar’s capacities as at the end of June 2022 were:

• Wafers: 43GW
• Cells: 42GW
• Modules: 50GW

.. so, even if expectations have been reined in somewhat, manufacturing capacity expansion is still continuing at a cracking pace.

Longi H1 2022 Results

Also last week, Longi announced its results for the first half of this year; stating it had shipped 39.62GW of monocrystalline silicon wafers. 20.15GW of this was sold to overseas customers and 19.47GW in the domestic market.

Shipments of Longi solar panels reached a smidge over 18 gigawatts for the first half of this year.

Longi says it has set global shipment targets for 2022 of 90GW-100GW monocrystalline silicon wafers and 50GW-60GW of modules. The company says it plans to achieve operating revenue of more than 100 billion yuan in 2022, which is around AUD $21.15 billion at current exchange rates.

Both Longi and Jinko solar panels have been popular in Australia given their features, performance and comparatively low pricing point. Both companies are currently listed on the SolarQuotes recommended solar panel brands chart.

In this years’ SQ Installers Choice Awards, JinkoSolar ranked second for the best solar panels in 2022 in the budget module category. Longi failed to score a guernsey this year, after coming in at third in 2021 in the budget category.

Fun fact 1: The 18 gigawatts of solar panels Longi shipped in the first 6 months of this year is more than the total capacity of all grid-connected small-scale (<100 kW capacity) solar power systems installed in Australia since 2001 – around 17.7 gigawatts (Source: Clean Energy Regulator). At as the end of July this year, more than 3.21 million small-scale PV systems had been installed across Australia.

Fun fact 2: Of the top 10 solar panel shippers in 2021 as ranked by PVInfoLink, eight of the rankings were occupied by Chinese companies.