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Solar energy plays an essential role in achieving carbon goals and mitigating climate change. Therefore, solar power plants are rapidly developing in the renewable energy sector. However, many reports of solar power plants are on land, and extremely limited observational research has been conducted on the impacts of fishery complementary photovoltaic power plants (FPVs) on near-surface meteorology and surface energy. This study selected two adjacent eddy covariance observational towers at the fishery complementary photovoltaic power plant (FPV) in Yangzhong, Jiangsu Province, China, to explore this topic. The results indicated that the percent frequency of east wind (<4 m s−1) at 2 m decreased by 25.3% in the FPV site compared with the reference site. The FPV array has not an obvious heating effect on the ambient environment. The average air temperature difference in the two sites at 2 m and 10 m was 0.3 K and 0.1 K, respectively, during the heating period. The net radiation increased by 47.8 W m−2 in the two sites. The sensible heat increased by 7.9 W m−2 due to the heating effect. The latent heat in the two sites is contrary to the sensible heat (−13.0 W m−2). The difference in the water storage heat is 32.18 W m−2, which implies that the water absorbs higher heat in the FPV site than in the reference site. This work illustrated the importance of observational experiments to animate process-based understanding combined with FPV systems and provides a scientific basis for establishing FPV energy balance models based on observations that may be used to reveal the impact of utility-scale FPV deployment on climatic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to identify impacts of photovoltaic (PV) power plant on surface radiation, this paper conducted a comparative study on the surface radiation and surface albedo characteristics between the PV site and reference site in the Gobi area in Xinjiang, China in the summer of 2020. The results show that, the upward long-wave radiation at the PV site was significantly lower than that at the reference site in the night, while the two were basically the same during the daytime. The average surface albedo at the PV site (0.14) was 39.1% lower than that at the reference site (0.23). Net radiation was higher at the PV site than that at the reference site throughout the whole day. The average net radiation of the underlying surface at the PV site was 30.7% more than that at the reference site, 75% of which was contributed by lower upward shortwave radiation and 25% was due to nocturnal lower upward longwave radiation at the PV site. • Average surface albedo at photovoltaic power site decreases 39.1%. • Upward long-wave radiation at photovoltaic power site decreases significantly. • Average net radiation at photovoltaic power site increases 30.7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]