PAN Jinjun, JIANG Ying, GUO Peng, ZHANG Yongshan
Solar energy resource is the third renewable energy following hydropower and wind power. Europe remained the world's leading region in terms of its cumulative installed capacity, with more than 70 GW as of 2012, which represented about 70% of the world's cumulative PV capacity. Next in the ranking are China (8.3 GW) and the USA (7.8 GW), followed by Japan (6.9 GW). Since 2006, the annual growth rate of newly installed capacity of China has reached up to 200%-500%, far more than those of the other countries in the world. Based on a detailed analysis of the global and China PV industry development status, this paper studies the characteristics of solar resource reserves, China distribution and variation, as well as the environmental and meteorological factors influencing the utilization solar energy resources such as clouds, dust, fog and haze. There was a decreasing trend of reach the ground solar in China from 1961 to 1990, and an increasing trend from 1991 to 2000. The meteorological factors like clouds, dust, fog and haze may affect the situation of reach the ground solar. In China the total cloud and low cloud are less in the north and more in the south. The total cloud has shown a slightly decreasing trend and the low cloud a slightly increasing trend in China for the past 30 years. Sand and dust occur mainly in the Northwest China, and they have shown a significantly reduced trend. Fog and haze occur mainly in the local area of the Southeast China. Fog days have shown a significantly reduced trend, and haze a rapid increasing trend for the last 30 years. The different weather phenomena in different regions influence differently on the photovoltaic power generation efficiency. It is highly recommended that specific analysis should be done before establishment of any photovoltaic power station in order to better use resources and avoid unnecessary economic loss.
