SolarPVInvestor Forums

OMG all-in costs of 54 cents ! 45 for non-si and 9 for si.

I don't like the leverage but in terms of costs they are rock & rolling.

Quoted from "odyd12"

If they can do it other Chinese can (processing). If the others can get higher ASP, than things are moving in right direction.

That's a very good point and leads me to another question that I'm struggling with:

Why are JKS's non-si costs significantly lower than YGE's and TSL's even though the latter ones have double the capacity and a way longer track record in the market ???

Even the non-si goals for year-end 2013 are much lower for JKS. JKS targets 40 cents, while YGE and TSL target 45 cents.

Anybody have a clue on what's going on here?

Quoted from "odyd12"

600MW of Panda platform (imho) costing more using still old process. They could be upgrading to to recent formats offered by ECN but I am not sure, if they will ( my opinion)
On the other hand TSL could be in the same place with Jinko if fully utilized (more so expectation on my part)

thxs for your thoughts to you and explo. YGE guided 15% of Q4 production to be Panda, so costs of Panda must be quite high indeed (incl underutilization) if this is to explain a large chunk of the cost difference.

TSL presumably was @48 cents in Q4 ajusting for unterutilization.

One thing I noticed with JKS is a humongous disconnect between the stated production cost and the derived COGS when factoring with shipment figures.

Assuming the 54 cents all-in break down into 9 / 12 / 14 / 19 I get aggregate COGS of:

Modules: 252.3 x 0.54 = $136.2M
Wafers: 25.3 x 0.21 = $5.3M
Cells: 24.3 x 0.35 = $8.5M
Total: $150.0M

This compares with reported COGS of $180.3M, i.e. a $30M gap, which seems quite high to me even when accounting for inventory carrying and inventory write-down. Anybody have any thoughts on this?