The scale of land used for photovoltaic energy storage power station

Abstract—The rapid deployment of large numbers of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants in the United States, combined with heightened expectations of future deployment, has raised concerns about land requirements and associated land-use impacts.

The last major study of utility-scale PVs power and energy density in the United States (from Ong et al. ) is now almost a decade out of date, yet is still routinely cited on matters pertaining to land requirements and land use—despite the rapid evolution of the industry in the years since its publication.

• While there are potentially other ways (such as “agrivoltaics”) to mitigate the negative land-use impacts of utility-scale PV, the primary way to mitigate the inevitability of rising land costs is to minimize the amount of land needed to generate each MWh of solar energy

Classic structure of PV greenhouse system in agricultural land . PV plastic greenhouses are PV power generation facilities installed in the upper part of the greenhouse, mainly in the combination of continuous, double-film double-grid greenhouses, small and medium-sized arches and PV combined power generation systems [39, 40].

Land is a fundamental resource for the deployment of PV systems, and PV power projects are established on various types of land. As of the end of 2022, China has amassed an impressive 390 million kW of installed PV capacity, occupying approximately 0.8 million km2 of land .

Overall, the suitable land parcels in this study were mainly distributed in high-altitude areas, which corresponds to the study in Saudi Arabia, where the north and northwest of Saudi Arabia, mainly the plateau and mountainous areas, were considered the most suitable areas for PV power stations .