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The photovoltaic poverty alleviation project (PPAP), as an integration of solar photovoltaics and poverty alleviation, has gained great attention since it was proposed in China. So far, four different modes of PPAP have been formed - household level, village level, jointly-village level, and centralized PPAP. A comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of different PPAP modes is essential to achieve the aim of getting rid of poverty in Chinese rural areas and to provide references for other developing countries. Therefore, this paper, for the first time, evaluates the economic performance of PPAP under the four modes. By employing cost-benefit analysis, this research elaborates on the effectiveness of PPAP from three aspects – cashflow, net present value, and payback period. The results show that the village level and the jointly-village level PPAP are the most effective modes. However, due to the overplus of installed capacity per household, the centralized PPAP, which is in line with the local governments' income, becomes the most popular mode. Besides, bank loans can significantly increase the number of benefited households, and the beneficiary ratio is critical to the effectiveness of corporations' participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have developed rapidly in China, and the issues on where to locate the solar PV stations become critical. In some provinces, the markets are already saturated, and even solar energy curtailment has occurred due to oversupply. Thus, depicting an efficient deployment picture of the solar PV stations in China is in urgent need. To explore this issue, a profit-maximizing model is proposed to optimize the allocation of solar PV stations and interprovincial transmission strategies. The profit of solar PV stations in each province/municipality is evaluated from both economic and environmental perspectives. The economic performance is evaluated by net present value and levelized cost of energy, and the environmental benefits refer to the abatement of CO 2 emissions. The results show that the northwestern and northeastern regions are not suitable to further develop solar PV systems in recent years, while the developed regions including the Yangtze River Delta, Tianjin, Beijing, and Guangdong should be encouraged to deploy more solar PV systems, especially the distributed solar photovoltaics for the commercial/industrial sectors. In 2020, the newly-added installed capacity in Zhejiang, Shandong, Beijing, and Henan is supposed to excess 8500 MW. • Optimized deployment of solar PV stations at provincial level in China is depicted. • Northwest and northeast China lack demand for new solar PV stations in recent years. • Developed provinces should be highly encouraged to deploy more solar PV systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]