Looking ahead at our 2025 China Battery Tour by looking back at our Module Tour China 2006
As we’re launching the Solarplaza Battery Tour 2025, we’re getting a lot of flashbacks to our very first PV Business Tours to China in 2006. For that reason, we’d like to take you back to 2006 for a moment. Though it may seem like just a short time ago, two decades of incredible renewables industry growth have passed since then.
TL;DR ("Too long; didn't read")
Before we dive into the history, here are the key reasons why we are organizing the Battery Tour China 2025, fueled by the key takeaways from our early trade missions that we’re trying to illustrate with this article:
- Successful cooperation with Chinese manufacturers is - for a big part - still all about building trust and relationships, which can take years. You cannot start early enough, nor ever invest enough time in it.
- Business tours are an extremely efficient and fun way to kickstart that process, build out your network, and meet multiple people/suppliers in one week.
- Production quality is still a concern and major consideration in finding the right partners in battery production (very similar to quality concerns with PV back then). Visiting factories to see how it’s made and meeting partners greatly contribute to getting a better feeling and understanding.
- Technology is changing and improving rapidly still.
- The manufacturer’s landscape is constantly changing, with many smaller players becoming bigger in the blink of an eye, this is a good way to understand market dynamics.
Rewind to 2004
During the first two years of Solarplaza’s existence, we mainly focused on building our first online platform, publishing market reports, and taking on smaller consultancy jobs. Our core focus shifted when, in November 2005, we decided to organize our very first event: a trade mission to Spain that was aimed at exploring the promise of the nascent Spanish solar market. The process of organizing it wasn’t an easy one by any measure. Our founder, Edwin Koot, was even close to calling the whole thing off, were it not for the arrival of a single, liberating registration form (arriving by fax machine) at a crucial decision moment, which convinced him to pull through and kicked off a streak of 242 events (and counting).
The trade mission was a success and led us to immediately start exploring other potential markets for the concept. At that moment in time - basically the dawn of the true global solar boom - the Chinese market seemed far more than half a world away. But its promise loomed large and word of the ramp-up of its manufacturing capacity was starting to reach Europe. Mind you, this was when European and American manufacturers still dominated the production of PV modules, and Chinese solar manufacturers were only just getting started.
The Solarplaza PV Business Tour 2006
With contacts and knowledge obtained from writing an extensive report on the Chinese market, Edwin started mapping out a business tour to China. He managed to put together a packed program of meetings and factory visits and assembled a group of European and American investors and developers eager to get a peak of what was rumored to become the big new frontier of solar product development.
During that week in April 2006, the visits to the facilities, and meetings with high officials, of companies like Suntech, LDK Solar, Trina Solar, and Yingli were extremely fruitful. These companies grew out to become leaders of the big first wave of high-quality Chinese-made solar panels, which helped markets around the world reach scale. Moreover, the connections made during the tour proved to be of immense value. Not just the handshakes with the representatives of these manufacturers and the direct lines established between the product suppliers and global investors, but also the relationships forged among the participants of the trade mission itself. Even for us, the event led to a large number of long-lasting business relationships that remain productive until this very day. What we also learned, is how valuable all the moments around and in between the important meetings and factory visits turn out to be. The shared meals, the bus trips, the exploration of growing megacities, and a little touristy moment here and there. All of it contributed to a sense of team-building among the group members.
In the words of Edwin Koot:
“The PV Business Tour China in 2006 was one of the first events I organized with Solarplaza and one that led to fond memories and amazing results. I could not have imagined the enormous impact of this business mission. It led to incredibly valuable business relationships and friends for life. In addition to the great learnings from the factory visits, the in-depth discussions and exchanges of experiences with all experienced senior participants in the informal parts of the program resulted in unparalleled strategic insights and partnerships that continue to this day.”
2006-2025: The ‘Solarcoaster’
Two decades later, the solar industry has been through a remarkable trajectory of growth, but also many ups and downs: the ‘solarcoaster’, as many like to call it. Chinese manufacturing and economies of scale have empowered solar development around the world to reach heights previously unimaginable and Chinese manufacturers continue to claim the lion’s share of the global production supply chain. Naturally, there’s been a “change of the guard” in the top names, as pioneering giants like Suntech, Yingli, and LDK have risen and fallen in the years since. However, other names of those early days - and our early visits to China in 2006 and 2009 - have managed to thrive and cemented their positions, like Trina Solar and Jinko Solar.
It’s actually kind of mind-blowing to see pictures from our 2006 trade mission of a Trina representative presenting their module manufacturing capacity as being 50 MW at that time, while it now stands at a whopping 95 GW.
Meeting Battery Makers at the Battery Tour China 2025
So now we’re finally arriving at our point: the parallels between those early days of Chinese module manufacturing and the present-day situation of Chinese battery manufacturers.
Of course, the battery manufacturing industry is already operating at a scale many times the size of that of the PV module manufacturing back in 2006. However, we believe that for our community of renewable energy professionals, similar needs and challenges do exist. We all know that we’re going to need a massive amount of energy storage capacity to unlock the next phase of growth for renewables, and every large-scale PV developer knows that solar plants will make less and less sense with coupled BESS.
But the landscape of battery producers is not as clear and transparent (yet) as that of the PV modules we’ve grown to become so comfortable with. And with limited natural resources, intransparent supply chains, and major competition (both with the EV industry and within our own industry) for battery supply, the need for a good overview of, and good contacts within, the battery manufacturing industry will only become more crucial. There are of course already some major established names, but there are also many new, relatively untested, names popping up that are jumping into the battery game and are trying to find a market for their products.
That’s why we are excited and eager to go back to China with a similar mission as in 2006: to bring a varied group of international developers, investors, and EPCs to the heart of the Chinese manufacturing industry to establish future-oriented business relationships and to get a first-hand experience of the next frontier of the energy transition. Because: seeing is believing!
Learn more about the Solarplaza Battery Tour China 2025 on the website, sign up for updates, or claim your spot on the limited tour group!
