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The price of silver has increased by more than 30% since the beginning of the year, with a particularly strong increase in recent months.
The price of silver has risen significantly since the beginning of this year and has already exceeded $31 per ounce (31.1 grams).
“The silver market is doing well at the moment, and this is due to continued strong industrial demand for silver, especially in clean energy and electrical and electronic applications. In addition, there is a significant shortage in silver supply,” Michael DiRienzo, president and CEO of The Silver Institute, told pv magazine . “The silver price has increased by more than 30% since the beginning of the year, with the sharp increase being particularly strong in recent months.”
Another reason for the price increase was also the recent lowering of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, which made hard assets such as precious metals more attractive to investors.
Silver is currently trading at around $31, compared to $20 in the same period last year. “Despite this rise in the silver price, most analysts do not believe it represents a critical threshold for the photovoltaic industry,” DiRienzo said.
The average silver price was set at $23.35 per ounce in 2023, compared with $21.73 per ounce in 2022.
US investment firm Bank of America Corporation predicts that the average price of silver could reach $28.14 per ounce in 2024 and $35.38 per ounce next year.
Solar cells use silver to conduct electrical charge out of the cell and into the system. Each cell produced today requires only a few milligrams of the precious metal, but this adds up quickly and many recent studies have illustrated how the rapidly growing solar industry could exhaust much of the worlds known silver reserves by 2050 or even sooner.
If the current growth trajectory of the solar PV market continues, some 332 million ounces of silver will be needed by 2050 to support 1.33 terawatts/year of new installations, according to the Silver Institute. |
