A method for predicting the solar photovoltaic (PV) potential in China

Abstract

Abstract A reliable assessment of energy efficiency for photovoltaic system is of importance for the solar energy policy planning and industrial development. Despite extensive advances over past years, almost all economic analyses overlooked the effect of local environment on the photoelectric conversion efficiency of solar cells, therefore leading to a non-negligible error in the prediction of photovoltaic potential. In this work, we developed a unified model to evaluate the regional economics of photovoltaic system by incorporating the heat transfer in solar cell and associated environmental influences. This model significantly improves the prediction accuracy of photovoltaic potential by establishing a correlation between the regional meteorological data and solar energy generation. In particular, with a meteorological data reduction, we dramatically decrease the computational complexity for predicting the photovoltaic potential. Through a theoretical analysis with the unified model, we demonstrate that the existing price mechanism of PV electricity in China cannot fully eliminate the economic disparities in various areas owing to the neglect of environmental effect. This work not only offers new insight into the research of solar resource and related policy making, but also provides guidelines for the further development of solar power industry.