The tool shows China ground mounted solar facilities occupied a surface of 2,467.7 km2 at the end of December 2020. Scientists led by the China Agricultural University have created a national-scale map and dataset of ground-mounted PV power stations in China.
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.
To sum up, we provide a 10-m map for China’s PV power stations to provide reference data to understand the spatial pattern of China’s PV industry. The dataset could also be used for other applications such as prediction of PV’s generating capacity and site selection for newly built PV power stations.
The China Energy Map offers a comprehensive, interactive visualization of key energy infrastructure across China. Since its initial launch as the Baker Institute China Oil Map in February 2019, the map has undergone significant development and continues to expand.
Above all, as the first publicly released 10-m national-scale distribution dataset of China’s ground-mounted PV power stations, it can provide data references for relevant researchers in fields such as energy, land, remote sensing and environmental sciences.
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.