Orders continued to stream into the photovoltaic (PV) market during the latter half of July 2015. Besides China's domestic demand being spurred by government policy, market demand remains strong across regions, including the US, Japan and India. Capacity utilization rates continue to rise for all industry participants, and top-tier module makers downstream will see their capacities fully booked for at least the next three months. According to EnergyTrend, high demand will persist to year-end, but price increases will be somewhat limited.

"With demand becoming certain, the main factor dictating prices along the supply chain in August will be China closing its polysilicon process trade loophole," said Angus Kao, analyst at EnergyTrend. Polysilicon prices in China may stabilize and then rise when polysilicon imports diminish and demand picks up. Nonetheless, the downstream market will determine the extent of price increases, and prices have been mostly set for August's downstream orders. Hence, the China polysilicon market will not see a big price jump in August, and the increase will be around 2-3%.

In the silicon wafer market, demand is shifting towards high-efficiency multi-Si wafers because of efficiency improvements made on PV modules. Since orders for high-quality wafers have been brisk, second- and third-tier wafer manufacturers have added capacities into the production. Thus, wafer price increases have been limited. High-efficiency multi-Si wafers from top-tier manufacturers are expected to reach US$0.835/pc. However, the acceptable price range for most cell makers is between US$0.825/pc and US$0.83/pc. Wafer prices will be eventually decided by the extent of price increases in the raw material and end product markets.

Furthermore, mono-Si wafer demand will be linked to system products that are being developed by wafer manufacturers themselves. These projects will be able to consume a part of the overall mono-Si wafer capacity. The room for mono-Si wafer process is relatively large, so EnergyTrend predicts that prices will continue to fall in the mono-Si wafer market to stimulate demand. As for the cell market, demand has been strong for high-efficiency multi-Si products in August, with orders once again going to second- and third-tier makers. However, module prices have hit the ceiling and there is an excess of cell capacity. Consequently, the price uptrend in the August cell market will be limited as well.

• [Editor:tianyawei]