BIPV: New scenario of PV application
PV power station is the end application market of PV industry chain, which can be divided into centralized power station and distributed power station according to the installed scale of the power station, the distance from the user, and the voltage level of the access grid. Distributed power plants can be broadly divided into three categories.
(1) BAPV (photovoltaic module and building combination) is the main form, that is, the power station installed in the roof of the building has been put into use, outside the wall, etc., the original structure of the building does not affect the BAPV's sole purpose is to use the idle space for power generation, the core demand is to improve power generation efficiency (including low cost and high power).
(2) BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaic Modules), which is also a combination of PV modules and buildings, with the difference that PV modules and buildings are integrated as an inseparable part, and the modules have both power generation, decoration and building material functions, without taking power generation performance as the only criterion for consideration.
(3) non-building scenarios, including agriculture and light complementary, fish and light complementary projects, the organic combination of PV and other industries.
BIPV combines the functions of power generation, building materials and aesthetics in one. For traditional BAPV, PV modules are used only as an accessory to the building, with the purpose of generating electricity from additional unused building space.
In contrast, BIPV not only retains the power generation function of the PV modules, but can also become part of the building structure as a building material. In addition, BAPVs are more of a "redundant" part of the building, designed without aesthetic consideration.
BIPV can be customized to the building structure with different curvatures, colors, shapes, and transparency, making it more "aesthetically pleasing".
Market Capacity
According to third-party statistics, the current global market capacity is around US$1.1-1.5 billion.
In recent years, the PV industry has gradually developed and matured, and product prices across the industry in the process of moving towards grid parity have fallen rapidly, with efficiency continuing to improve; while the price of building materials has risen in recent years due to supply-side reforms, both of which have together improved the cost performance of BIPV.
In the long run, this is still a blue ocean market with a far lesser degree of excavation. Taking China as an example, the cumulative market installation scale of BIPV in China is only about 1.1GW as of 2018, and the market scale is expected to be less than 5 billion.
According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, China's annual building completion area is around 4 billion square meters, and if the BIPV penetration rate is 2%, the annual incremental space of new buildings alone is more than 100 billion, which is much higher than the current market capacity.
Technical solutions: thin film cells are the best
From the perspective of the development of photovoltaic cells, the industry usually divides them into crystalline silicon cells and thin film cells; among them, thin film cells include inorganic compound cells and new thin film cells.
Crystalline silicon cells, with the best cost performance, is the absolute mainstream of the PV industry, accounting for more than 90% of the mainstream field PV market share; but the surface of crystalline silicon cells come with grid lines, uneven color, and silicon material is not light-transmitting, difficult to use as BIPV components.
In addition from a first-line manufacturers of crystalline silicon hollow BIPV modules, its light transmission is achieved at the expense of a large amount of power generation area, and the silicon wafer coverage area at the light transmission effect is also very poor. In general, from the comparison of the characteristics of various technologies and the requirements of BIPV, thin film technologies (CdTe and CIGS) are more suitable for BIPV overall.
While crystalline silicon technologies (conventional and IBC) are hard in terms of product richness and flexibility, which greatly limit their application scenarios.
Investment advice
At present, the BIPV market is still in the incubation period, the establishment of external policies and standards after the establishment of the Alliance is expected to accelerate, internal thin film cells have experienced many years of technology accumulation, CdTe, calcium titanium ore and other technologies gradually have a more competitive cost, the cost performance in the market segments highlighted, the future BIPV applications are expected to accelerate penetration and become an important part of the PV market.
CdTe technology is recommended to pay attention to the leading domestic CdTe module manufacturer Long Yan Energy Technology (not listed), which was established earlier and has accumulated certain experience in the BIPV market.
Rike New Energy (unlisted), a new domestic CdTe manufacturer established in 2015 with abundant BIPV products such as color translucent and color glazed components, and Ming Yang Intelligence (601615, not rated), a domestic wind turbine leader, is its investment holding party.
Calcium titanium ore technology is recommended to focus on Oxford PV, the world's strongest R&D and industrial design capability, domestic wind turbine leader Goldwind (002202, not rated) is one of its major shareholders, GCL Nano's major affiliates GCL-Poly (3800.HK, not rated), and Fibrina Technology (not listed).
