The Index

Why PCSPI?

In recent years, the silicon market has undergone many changes – volatile prices, increasing price spreads, rising quality variation, rapid volume growth and new sales dynamics. This has created significant uncertainty for companies selling silicon, users purchasing silicon and interested parties investing in silicon production. This uncertainty has been magnified by limited transparency for silicon volumes and prices, particularly as it pertains to high-purity or solar-grade silicon. In order to increase transparency and visibility of silicon prices, PHOTON Consulting, a world-renowned solar energy research firm and consultancy, created PHOTON Consulting Silicon Price Index (PCSPI).

The Methodology

PHOTON Consulting has developed a robust proprietary system for determining current solar-grade silicon prices. PCSPI is generated by collecting data from numerous sources including but not exclusive to silicon producers, consumers and traders. Producers include existing producers of polysilicon and upgraded metallurgical silicon (UMG-Si). Consumers include solar ingot, wafer and cell manufacturers, as well as semiconductor wafer producers.

Under strict data and source confidentiality covenants, PHOTON Consulting actively surveys individuals in various positions at these silicon stakeholder organizations (including CEOs, purchasing managers and sales professionals) from a broad geographic base (including Europe, Asia and North America) to collect price information. These data point are then aggregated and incorporated into our proprietary indexing model to create PCSPI.

Index Maintenance

PHOTON Consulting has developed survey criteria and methodologies that will ensure consistent price reporting. PHOTON Consulting also continues to refine the indexing and survey methodology to improve on the accuracy of the Index. On occasion, new survey participants may be added to the PCSPI and will be reflected in the PCSPI results as it is updated and published each month.

Index Calculation & Weighting

The PHOTON Consulting Silicon Price Index (PCSPI) is a weighted index in which silicon prices reported by each survey participant are weighted to reflect the nuances found in the length of reported silicon contracts, prepayments and price digression.

Index Universe (Participants)

The PCSPI relies on data gathered from survey participants with exposure to silicon contract and spot prices. The current organizational composition of the index includes both privately held and publicly traded buyers (consumers), sellers (producers) and trading companies located in North America, Asia, and Europe.