Die Photovoltaik-BC-Camp erweitert sich erneut. Kommt die Umschwung der Geschäftsergebnisse zuerst?

“BC technology is one of the main development directions of photovoltaics and holds significant strategic importance.” Chen Zhimin, the vice president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society, said in his speech at the unveiling ceremony of the Global BC Ecological Collaborative Innovation Center during the 2025 BC Ecological Innovation Summit on August 2nd.

It is reported that during the aforementioned conference, Laplace New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., Shaanxi Xingbei New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and Jiangyin Haida New Energy Materials Co., Ltd. signed agreements to join Longi's "All Walk Together Program" and became important members of the BC ecosystem.

Notably, on July 21st, Gaojing Solar, the third-largest silicon wafer shipper globally, announced its official entry into the large-scale mass production phase of BC modules. In addition to Gaojing, TCL Zhonghuan, GCL, and Chint have also previously entered the BC technology field with high profiles, and the BC camp is gradually expanding.

Although the competition among technologies such as TOPCon and BC continues, Foresee Energy has observed that, on the one hand, against the backdrop of severe overcapacity in the photovoltaic manufacturing industry, major manufacturers have basically suspended the expansion plans of the domestic OPCon route. Currently, the ongoing capacity construction projects are mainly focused on the BC technology route. The current planned new/retrofitted XBC capacity is nearly 90GW.

On the other hand, although the TOPCon technology still dominates the industry, the BC camp is gradually gaining momentum. Judging from the latest announced performance, enterprises represented by Longi Green Energy and Aikosolar Co., Ltd. have better market performance than the TOPCon camp.

01

The full name of the BC battery (Back Contact Cell) is the back-contact battery, and its basic type is the IBC battery, namely the Interdigitated Back Contact Cell.

The IBC battery was first proposed by Schwartz and Lammert in 1975. It is a silicon solar cell in which both the emitter electrode and the base electrode of the battery are designed on the back of the battery. Its emitter and back surface field are arranged in a cross pattern on the back of the battery, and the emitter and base metal contact electrodes are also in a cross shape. The front and back sides are passivated with an oxide layer to reduce carrier recombination. The front of the battery has no grid line shading, and its appearance is exquisite.

The difference between BC technology and technologies such as TOPCon, HJT, and PERC lies in that it mainly places the p+ emitter, n+ back field region, and grid lines on the back of the battery through the back patterning process, which is a change in the graphic structure of the back of the battery. The other three battery technology routes mainly change the efficiency and other characteristics by changing the film layer structure of battery passivation.

In addition, the BC battery technology is essentially an electrode engineering platform that can be organically combined with technologies such as TOPCon, HJT, and perovskite. It combines the advantages of other technologies and further improves the conversion efficiency, and is collectively referred to as the XBC battery (X Back Contact Cell), that is, various types of back-contact batteries. Currently, the common ones include TBC batteries, ABC batteries, HPBC batteries, HBC batteries, etc.

Currently, mainstream battery products such as Longi's second-generation HPBC and Aikosolar's ABC are mainly based on the TBC structure. The TBC battery and HBC battery combine the high short-circuit current of the BC battery with the excellent passivation contact characteristics of the TOPCon battery and the high open-circuit voltage of the HJT battery, respectively, to obtain higher battery efficiency. Currently, the TBC technology has been fully mass-produced, and the HBC technology is still in the process of promoting mass production.

Although the shipment scale of BC modules is currently small, its high premium compared to TOPCon modules is certain.

According to Infolink data, as of July 23rd, the average price of domestic BC modules was 0.76 yuan/W, 0.08 yuan/W higher than that of TOPCon modules. The average prices of BC modules for household and commercial and industrial projects in Europe reached 0.182 US dollars/W and 0.115 US dollars/W, respectively, 0.085 US dollars/W higher than the average price of TOPCon.

In addition, according to the performance briefing record disclosed by Aikosolar Co., Ltd. on May 29th, the ABC module, with its product advantages of high power, high returns, and ultra-safety, has a significant sales premium compared to TOPCon competitors in the domestic and international markets through a value-based pricing business model. In the domestic distributed market, the product premium is about 10%. In the overseas distributed commercial and industrial market, the premium is about 10%-20%. In high-value household markets such as Europe, the premium can reach about 30%-40%. Among them, the double-glass ABC module with high power and all-black aesthetics can be sold at a channel price of over 1.2 yuan/W in the European household market. In the centralized market, with comprehensive advantages such as improved bifacial rate, optimized shadow shading, low risk of hidden cracks, and low hot-spot temperature, the ABC module has also gained customer recognition in terms of premium.

Domestically, since a separate 1GW BC bid section was set up in the 15GW framework agreement procurement tender of China Huaneng Group in August last year, many large power investment groups have set up separate bid sections for BC technology in photovoltaic module tenders.

This means that BC modules have also been recognized by the market in the domestic centralized market.

According to public information, in the component centralized procurement by central state-owned enterprises since 2025, BC modules still maintain a premium of 0.04-0.06 yuan/W compared to TOPCon modules. In the centralized procurement by Datang Group in March and the centralized procurement of new energy by the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in April, separate bid sections were set up for BC technology, and average premiums of 0.046 yuan/W and 0.06 yuan/W were obtained, respectively. In the centralized procurement by Inner Mongolia Energy Group in February, no separate BC bid section was set up. Longi's second-generation HPBC directly participated in the large-scale centralized bidding with TOPCon, and still obtained an average premium of 0.056 yuan/W.

"BC batteries have great potential. However, BC is a systematic project, and it is not that easy to make good BC batteries." Shen Wenzhong, the director of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, also admitted at the aforementioned unveiling ceremony.

In fact, although currently, with the expansion of BC battery module production capacity and the increase in shipments, the scale effect is accelerating, and its production cost has entered a downward channel. However, in some core cost dimensions, including the initial equipment investment, mass production yield level, and silver paste unit consumption, there is still room for optimization of the BC technology, and continuous cost reduction is needed through technological upgrading.

02

In addition to the expansion of production capacity and the enlargement of the "camp", due to the premium brought by the differentiated technology, the current market performance of BC enterprises is better than that of the TOPCon camp.

Aikosolar Co., Ltd. has become the first enterprise in the main photovoltaic industry chain to turn losses into profits in a single quarter, and the net profit attributable to the parent company is expected to be between 0.2 and 1.3 billion yuan. According to the announcement, the company expects to achieve a net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company of between -1.7 billion yuan and -2.8 billion yuan in the first half of 2025. The company expects to achieve a net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company after deducting non-recurring gains and losses of between -4.1 billion yuan and -5.2 billion yuan in the first half of 2025. In the first quarter of this year, Aikosolar Co., Ltd. had a net loss of about 300 million yuan.

This means that in the second quarter, it achieved a year-on-year net profit attributable to the parent company of between 0.2 and 1.3 billion yuan, turning losses into profits in a single quarter.

Longi Green Energy has also significantly reduced its losses. The company's performance forecast released on July 14th shows that it is expected to have a net loss of between 2.4 and 2.8 billion yuan attributable to shareholders of listed companies in the first half of 2025, a year-on-year reduction of between 2.443 and 2.843 billion yuan. During the reporting period, affected by the competitive environment where the market sales prices of major photovoltaic industry products fell below the industry cost line, the company's operations were still in the red, with an increase in volume but no increase in revenue. The main reason for the year-on-year reduction in losses is the rapid decline in the unit cost of major products, sales expenses, management expenses, and asset impairment losses.

During the reporting period, Longi's HPBC 2.0 module products were gradually launched into the market. With their characteristics of high conversion efficiency, high appearance, and high safety, they quickly won market recognition, and the order signing volume and shipment volume increased rapidly.

In fact, the market performance of BC technology is stronger than expected, which was also reflected during the SNEC in 2025. In addition to the two leading enterprises, Longi and Aikosolar, many enterprises have joined the BC camp. According to the compilation of industry media, during the SNEC, 22 enterprises, including Tongwei Co., Ltd., TCL Zhonghuan, Talesun Solar, and Jolywood Co., Ltd., exhibited BC products.

However, the technological competition between BC and TOPCon remains fierce.

On August 16th, 2024, at the 2024 TOPCon Solar Cell Technology Development Trend Seminar hosted by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, Trina Solar, JA Solar, Tongwei, and Yidao, together with JinkoSolar, participated in this conference as the leading enterprises in TOPCon battery modules, while Longi was absent. The opinions at the meeting indicated that the TOPCon technology will maintain its mainstream position in the next five years.

Among the list of enterprises exhibiting BC products at the SNEC in 2025, only JinkoSolar was absent.

JinkoSolar is the earliest enterprise in the industry to engage in the research and mass production of TOPCon technology. Jin Hao, the CTO of the company, said in a dialogue among senior executives that the TOPCon technology can theoretically reach an efficiency limit of 29%. The technical equipment and facilities it uses are relatively similar to those of PERC, and there is a relatively complete supply chain in China. On April 27th, 2025, the "White Paper on the Development of Back Contact (BC) Battery Technology" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") showed a phased judgment that "TOPCon batteries became the mainstream product in 2024, and the BC technology may become dominant after 2030", recognizing that the TOPCon technology will still be the mainstream in the next five years.

However, a research report by Tianfeng Securities once pointed out that since the second half of 2024, the development of the TOPCon technology has been slow. Although the efficiency of TOPCon can be improved through technological progress in the future, additional process steps and transformation costs are required.

In addition, different from BC technology products, the supply of TOPCon products far exceeds the demand, and there is too much excess capacity. The global TOPCon production capacity is expected to reach 900GW in 2025, far exceeding the actual demand.

"With the increasingly significant scale effect and the in-depth promotion of base metalization, the unit production cost shows a continuous downward trend, driving a steady increase in the profit level." Kaiyuan Securities predicted in a recent research report that it is expected that in the next five years, the shipment proportion of BC modules will increase from nearly 5% in 2024 to over 25%. 'Relying on a more favorable supply-demand pattern and a solid technological moat, leading enterprises deeply involved in the BC technology route are expected to be the first to welcome the performance inflection point.'

This article is from the WeChat official account "Foresee Energy". The author is Foresee Energy. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.