By 2020, the mileage of Chinese highway was 143,684 km and the area was 3,957 km 2. The installed capacity and power generation of PV highways in China are 700.85 GW and 629.06 TWh, respectively. Installing photovoltaic (PV) modules on highways is considered a promising way to support carbon neutrality in China.
The PV power generation potential of highway slopes can be determined after entering the highway geometric and radiation data and adopting the desirable placement scheme of the PV array. Figure 1. The technical approach of the highway slope PV power generation potential assessment. 2.1. Highway Segmentation and Slope Area Calculation
The theoretical and actual power generation of the PV system on the slopes of the selected highway section. Table A7. The assessment results of the solar power generation on the slopes of different highway segments (kWh).
Then, the technical, policy and economic (i.e., theoretical power generation) constraints for wind and PV energy development were comprehensively considered to evaluate the wind and solar PV power generation potential of China in 2020.
Through GIS analysis, the technical potential of land centralized photovoltaic power in China is about 41.88 billion kW (Table 5). The spatial pattern of the technical potential of China’s centralized photovoltaic power is basically the same as the spatial pattern of solar energy resource endowment.
Central and southeast China is abundant in wind and solar energy. The technical potential of onshore wind power and photovoltaic power in this area is 8.33 billion kW. The technical potential of distributed PV power is 1.81 billion kW, accounting for nearly half of the country’s total. At the same time, the region is close to the load center.