Photovoltaic panels in China s mountainous areas

Where are PV power plants located in China?

Eventually, we established a map of PV power plants in China by 2020, covering a total area of 2917 km2. We found that most PV power plants were situated on cropland, followed by barren land and grassland, based on the derived national PV map. In addition, the installation of PV power plants has generally decreased the vegetation cover.

Which land is used for PV power stations in China?

Fig. 1 Examples of PV power stations in China. The land used for PV power stations includes gobi (left), grassland (top), water bodies (right), mountain land (bottom), etc. The objective of this study is to provide the first publicly released 10-m national map of ground-mounted PV power stations of China in 2020.

Does China need a comprehensive map of PV power plants?

With the world's highest cumulative and fastest built PV capacity, China needs to assess the environmental and social impacts of these established PV power plants. However, a comprehensive map regarding the PV power plants' locations and extent remains scarce on the country scale.

How many ground-mounted PV power stations are there in China?

According to our dataset, China has a total of 2467.7 km 2 ground-mounted PV power stations in 2020. The top three largest provinces refer to Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Qinghai, whose PV area ratio are 14.92%, 12.49% and 11.26%, respectively, with a total of nearly 40% of all the PV power stations of China.

Do PV power plants reduce vegetation in China?

The PV power plants in China are more likely to be installed in suitable natural conditions but with low power demand or in areas with high local energy demand. We also found that installing PV power plants will generally decrease the vegetation. Our dataset is conducive to policy management and environmental assessment.

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.