Photovoltaic bracket in Northwest China

Where are PV power stations located in China?

Recent years have seen a PV industry surge in the region. Therefore, we choose northwestern China, consisting of five provinces, as the geographic foci of research, where most of the large PV power stations in China are located (Zhao et al., 2013) and these five provinces are in the top five in terms of installed PV capacity.

Why are PV power stations growing in China?

Energy policies are the main factor driving the rapid development of PV power stations in China (Fig. 10 a) (Yang et al., 2020). Since 2004, China’s PV production has experienced tremendous growth due to the dramatic increase in demand for PV in European countries and reached number one in the world in 2007 (Xu, 2016).

What is the regional distribution of photovoltaic power stations in China?

In general, the regional distribution of photovoltaic power stations in China is quite different, and the regional competition patterns are variable. Provinces with high installed photovoltaic power stations and high regional competition are mainly located in Northwest and North China.

Why do we need to monitor photovoltaic power development in China?

Particularly, in China, the number and scale of photovoltaic (PV) power stations have grown unprecedentedly in the last decade. There is an urgent need to monitor the PV power development in order to accurately estimate national renewable potentials and understand the ecological impacts.

How many PV power stations are there in the northwest?

Of the 309 PV station clusters (hereafter, PV parks), the top 7% largest ones account for 61% of the total area of PV power stations, indicating that PV power stations in the Northwest tend to be developed in the form of large-scale centralized PV parks.

Does China have a spatial map of PV power stations?

Although some researchers released several PV power station maps, most only met a medium resolution of 30 meters 9, 10. There thus still lacks a national map of China’s PV power stations with a higher spatial resolution (i.e., 10 meters) that could provide a global understanding of PV’s spatial deployment patterns.