Forecasting large-scale distributed photovoltaics based on subsidies and policy in China

The urgent imperative to reduce carbon emissions is necessitating a widespread transition to clean energy and power grid infrastructure that relies on renewable energy sources, such as distributed photovoltaic (PV) systems.

In China, policy that subsidizes power from distributed photovoltaic systems has helped expand their development scale. Every kilowatt-hour generated receives a fixed amount from the government, whether for self-consumption or selling to the grid. This has led to cumulative installed capacity growing by more than 20% from 2020 to 2021. Still, numerous challenges associated with transitioning to a large-scale distributed PV grid connection make forecasting its implementation in a policy context important.

Using Beijing as their study focus, Yang et al. introduced a forecasting model for the development tendency of regional distributed PV based on system dynamics, subsidies, and government policy. Simulation results reveal that the installation scale in Beijing will continue from 2022 to 2035 but will not reach full capacity, necessitating further development.

“The newly issued, countywide promotion policy of photovoltaics has provided a new source for the scale growth of distributed PV,” said author Shu-Xia Yang. “The countywide promotion policy requires local government to fully coordinate local roof resources, then package the integrated resources to a few enterprises for centralized installation and grid connection. The more roof resources the local government can coordinate, the more distributed photovoltaic enterprises can install. This will inevitably have an impact on the future development scale of distributed PV.”

“What we have researched can help the power grid to predict the development trends and the grid-connected scale of distributed PV in Beijing in advance and allow the power grid to provide large-scale access of distributed PV,” said Yang.

Source: “Economic modeling of distributed photovoltaic penetration considering subsidies and countywide promotion policy: An empirical study in Beijing,” by Shu-Xia Yang, Yang Zhang, and Xiao-Yu Cheng, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (2022). The article can be accessed at http://doi.org/10.1063/5.0102574 .