In recent years, China''s solar photovoltaic (PV) power has developed rapidly and has been given priority in the national energy strategy. This study constructs an energy-economy-environment integrated model by way of a dynamic programming approach to explore China''s solar PV power optimal development path during the period 2018–2050 from the ...
Most of China's solar power is generated within its western provinces and is transferred to other regions of the country. In 2011, China owned the largest solar power plant in the world at the time, the Huanghe Hydropower Golmud Solar Park, which had a photovoltaic capacity of 200 MW.
Photovoltaic research in China began in 1958 with the development of China's first piece of monocrystalline silicon. Research continued with the development of solar cells for space satellites in 1968. The Institute of Semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences led this research for a year, stopping after batteries failed to operate.
New and cumulative installed capacities of China's solar PV power from 2000 to 2017. In order to effectively coordinate the scale and speed of the solar PV installation with the economic development, China has occasionally set and adjusted the development targets for solar PV power.
However, most of the PV potential in China is distributed in sparsely populated regions such as northwest and Tibet of China, and more than 95% of PV power generation in these areas is centralized PV power generation .
Continuously enhancing the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells is an effective measure to reduce the overall cost of photovoltaic power generation, he said. China added 216.88 GW of new PV capacity in 2023, up 148.12 percent from 2022, when the country added 87.41 GW of solar.
The PV power generation potential of China was estimated using ERA5-Land hourly data with a spatial resolution of 0.1° × 0.1° (about 10 km × 10 km), and a temporal resolution of 1 h. The quality of the data of ERA5 has also been improved compared to the previous data .