The root cause of the tight supply and rising prices of PV inverters

　　On April 12, 2021, a Chinese inverter company took the lead to release the "Statement on Adjusting the Price of PV Inverter Products". The file stated that because of the extreme shortage of chips, IGBTs and other accessories, the prices have risen repeatedly, and the prices of bulk raw materials such as copper and aluminum have also been rising. For this reason, they decided to increase the inverter price by 10-15%.

　　The price of inverters has been in a downward channel, but this year has begun to see a price increase trend. It is expected that this phenomenon may become more pronounced by the end of the year.

　　In 2019, global inverter shipments were 126.7GW and revenue reached 8.59 billion U.S. dollars. With the vigorous development of household PV power generation, some institutions predict that the global inverter market will reach 300GW by 2025, with revenue of 18 billion U.S. dollars, and there is huge room for imagination.

　　The main materials of PV inverters are mechanical parts, electronic components and auxiliary materials. Among them, the mechanical parts are mainly plastic parts, die-casting parts, sheet metal parts, radiators, etc.; electronic components include IGBTs, integrated circuits, inductors, PCB circuit boards, capacitors, switching devices, connectors, etc.; auxiliary materials mainly include glues, packages, etc. Materials, insulation materials, etc.

　　The main reason for the shortage of inverter capacity this year is the shortage of core electronic devices-IGBTs.

　　IGBT is recognized internationally as the most representative product of the third power electronic technology revolution. It is directly responsible for controlling the direct and alternating current conversion of the drive system, and is called the "CPU" of the power converter device in the industry.

　　At present, the top five in the IGBT field account for about 70% of the global market share in this field. They are Germany's Infineon, the United States' ON Semiconductor, Italian and French companies merged STMicroelectronics, Japan's Mitsubishi and Toshiba.

　　Among them, Infineon alone accounted for 38.5% of sales, which exceeded the total of the second to fourth places by 7 percentage points. It has an undoubtedly absolute control position in this field.

　　Under normal circumstances, the supply cycle of IGBT is 7-8 weeks, and the price is relatively stable. But now the time has been doubled, as long as 13-30 weeks, and inverter manufacturers have to bear the pressure of chip manufacturers to increase prices every time they place an order.

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