China solar cell exports grow 73% in 2025

Demand rises for China’s solar cell and wafer exports as panel exports stagnate

In the first half of 2025, cells and wafers made up over 40% of China’s exports of solar products. Cells account for a bigger share than wafers for the first time.

China’s solar export market shows significant shifts in 2025, as global solar supply chains increasingly diversify. Ember now tracks and publishes cell and wafer exports from China in addition to panels, on a monthly basis, available via the interactive data tool and open dataset.

In this commentary, we provide a brief analysis of the cells and wafers dataset. The key takeaways are:

Cells and wafers now make up over 40% of China’s solar product exports in the first half of 2025. Panel exports are stagnating due to stockpile drawdowns and slowing installations in Europe and Brazil.
Cell prices have fallen by 82% since late 2022. This fall has been a major reason for the reduction in panel costs in recent years.
India drives the growth in cell exports. India, Indonesia and Türkiye account for 75% of cell exports from China in 2025. India alone contributed 52% of the year-on-year increase in cell exports as the country builds out a domestic solar manufacturing industry.

Cell and wafer exports are more than making up for the stagnation in Chinese solar panel exports so far in 2025. To understand the growing global solar supply chain, it’s now crucial to track products upstream of panels. India is driving growth in cell exports, whilst panels must now find new markets to go to.

Matt Ewen
‍Energy Systems Analyst, Ember

Cells and wafers now make up over 40% of China’s solar product exports

Chinese solar exports are diversifying

China exports not only significant amounts of solar panels, but also increasingly significant amounts of solar cells and wafers. China accounts for the largest share of manufacturing capacity at every stage of the solar panel supply chain. According to the IEA’s latest Photovoltaic Power Systems report, in 2023 China produced 98% of solar wafers, 92% of cells and 85% of panels globally.

As global pressures to manufacture panels locally have increased, the supply chain is changing and it is no longer sufficient to track only panel exports. Based on the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC) and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) reporting of exports, Ember now reports the monthly exports of these products by country. Details of how this dataset is compiled can be found in the Methodology.

Cell and wafer exports now drive solar export growth

For the first time since GACC reported panel and cell exports separately in 2022, panel export growth is stagnating. Cumulative panel exports have fallen by 5.2% year-on-year in the first 6 months of 2025 (-6.7 GW). Cell and wafer exports, however, have increased by 76% (+19 GW) and 26% (+8.6 GW) respectively. This increase means that combined solar product capacity exported by China is 11% higher than in the first half of 2024. The 208 GW that has been exported so far this year is more than twice Germany’s total installed solar capacity as of the end of 2024.

The growth in cell and wafer exports is a multi-year trend. From 2022 to 2024, cell exports have increased from 23 GW to 57 GW (+144%). Wafers increased from 36 GW to 60 GW (+67%) over the same period. So far in 2025, China has exported more solar cells (7.5 GW) and wafers (7 GW) on average each month than the total installed solar capacity of Portugal (6.3 GW). This growth has pushed cells and wafers to now make up more than 40% of China’s exported solar products.

Cell price reductions drive panel price reductions

Prices of solar products have fallen dramatically in recent years, with production innovations and the rapid expansion of manufacturing capacity contributing. After a silicon price spike in 2021-2022, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cells now cost less than a quarter of the average price across 2022. Meanwhile panel prices have fallen 63% over this period. Prices of Chinese products have stabilised since late 2024, amid intensifying industry and government efforts to maintain profitability. China’s extraordinary solar capacity installations in H1 2025, driven by a rush to deploy ahead of market rule changes, have helped buoy prices. It is not clear how prices will evolve in the second half of the year.

Panel price reductions are in large part due to the fall in cell prices. Since August 2022, the price of cells and panels exported from China has fallen by $0.16 and $0.20 per Watt respectively (cells from $0.19/W to $0.03/W, panels from $0.29/W to $0.09/W). More than 50% of the raw cost of Chinese solar panels is now contributed by components other than solar cells, such as glass facing and the aluminium border.

Key countries drive changes

As installations slow and stockpiles are accessed, European and Latin American panel imports are down in 2025, driving a fall in China’s total panel exports. Amid slowing deployment of rooftop solar and drawdown of warehouse stocks, EU solar capacity additions are expected to fall for the first time since 2016. The Netherlands, a major re-export hub of solar panels for Europe, is importing 30% fewer (-7.5 GW) panels in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year. This is the second consecutive year of decline in solar exports to Europe. In Brazil, meanwhile, panel imports from China decreased by 42% and solar installations by 36% in the first half of 2025, partly because of delays in grid connection availability.

Whilst Europe dominated demand for total solar product exports until 2023, in the first 6 months of 2025, Asia imported 114 GW, more than twice as much as Europe’s 54 GW. Increased demand for cells in India, Indonesia and Türkiye is reshaping solar trade. In the first half of 2025, these countries accounted for 75% of global demand for Chinese solar cells.

India accounts for 52% of Chinese cell export growth in 2025

India is rapidly building up its domestic panel and cell manufacturing industry. The Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has reported that in the financial year of 2024, 36 GW of panel capacity and 16 GW of cell capacity were added. As of March 2025, panel and cell manufacturing capacities stood at 68 GW and 25 GW respectively, more than double the solar capacity India installed in 2024 (32 GW). 120 GW of panel capacity is targeted by 2030.

This manufacturing capacity aims both to supply the domestic market, and to export to other countries. So far exports have been almost entirely to the US, which restricts Chinese imports via the UFLPA. Following recent scrutiny of Indian panels containing Chinese cells, and the US’s efforts to protect its own domestic industry, Indian exports to the US have fallen by 30% in GW terms in the first half of 2025.

Cell exports replace panel imports in India

With panel manufacturing capacity outpacing cell capacity, India currently relies on cell imports to feed its panel factories. In the first half of 2025, India’s cell imports have almost doubled compared to the same period last year, increasing from 11 GW to 21 GW. This increase accounts for 52% of the growth in Chinese cell exports between H1 2024 and H1 2025.

With the recent decision to extend ALMM status to domestic cell manufacturers from June 2026, India is now aiming to accelerate its domestic cell manufacturing capacity, with 65 GW expected by 2030, less than current panel manufacturing capacity. Wafer imports are now also accelerating to feed cell production.

Beyond its role in global solar trade, India’s domestic clean energy buildout is also accelerating. In June 2025, India hit a milestone of over 50% capacity from clean sources for the first time, with solar now making up 24% of India’s total capacity. With solar capacity set to double in many states by 2030-35, India’s development of local industry underpins its commitment to clean power.

About Ember

Ember is an independent, not-for-profit energy think tank that aims to shift the world to clean electricity using data. It gathers, curates and analyses data on the global power sector and its impact on the climate, using cutting edge technologies and making data and research as open as possible. It uses data-driven insights to shift the conversation towards high impact policies and empower other advocates to do the same. Founded in 2008 as Sandbag, it formerly focused on analysing, monitoring and reforming the EU carbon market, before rebranding as Ember in 2020. Its team of electricity analysts and other support staff are based around the world in the EU, UK, Türkiye, India, China and Indonesia.

Methodology

The IEA has stated that China’s solar photovoltaic exports account for 80% of the global market. While there is a wide variety of products that make up the solar supply chain, panels, cells and wafers make up the majority of exports by trade value, and can be expressed in GW terms. Ember tracks these products to give a clearer picture of the global solar supply chain.

Ember’s China solar exports dataset is sourced from the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC):

Panel data is available from 2017:
- Prior to 2022, assembled and non-assembled cells are not disaggregated into separate commodity codes in GACC reporting. The commodity code used is 85414020 (Solar cells). All exports in this category are assigned to panel exports.
- From 2022 onwards, the commodity code used is 85414300 (Photovoltaic cells assembled in modules or made up into panels).
Cell data is available from 2022:
- The commodity code used is 85414200 (Photovoltaic cells not assembled in modules or made up into panels).
Wafer data is available from 2022:
- The commodity code used is 38180019 (Monocrystal silicon disk/wafer, d. >15.24cm, doped for electronics).

Commodity prices

Average monthly panel, cell and wafer prices are sourced from weekly InfoLink Consulting Group publications. Prices are reported in USD/W for panels and cells and USD/pc for wafers. The market shares of each type for panels, cells and wafers are based on annual shares reported by the IEA and InfoLink. These annual shares are scaled to estimated monthly market shares, used to weight the types and calculate an average monthly price.

Prices are interpolated for missing months in 2017. The monthly product prices are included in the data download.

Capacity calculations

The capacity (MW) of the solar export products in this dataset is not reported by GACC. Ember estimates it using the following methods:

For panels and cells, Ember calculates capacity from the export value in US dollars (from the raw GACC customs data) and the average monthly panel and cell prices described above.
For wafers, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) periodically reports the cumulative export capacities of panels, cells and wafers. Ember calculates the g/W (from available MIIT reporting), and derives the capacity of monthly exports in kg from GACC.

Release Schedule

GACC releases the monthly solar export data with a one month lag (except for January and February data, which is released together in March). The GACC release is usually available on the 20th of the month, and this dataset is updated shortly afterwards.

Caveats

GACC export data records the first country products are exported to, which may not be the final destination country. This is particularly evident for exports to The Netherlands, which is a major re-export hub for European countries.

The price to capacity conversion of panels and cells is based on the average prices of each product type reported for that month. This should be regarded as an indicative value useful for comparing broad trends. In reality, the exact amounts of each product type and price they were traded at are not available in the customs data, and may vary by country.

Acknowledgements

Other contributors

Rini Sucahyo, Claire Kaelin, Dave Jones, Sam Hawkins, Duttatreya Das, Biqing Yang, James Blackwell

Photo credit

Michele D’Ottavio / Alamy