Objective Sichuan Basin and Chongqing region (referred to as Sichuan and Chongqing region) due to poor resource endowment and the current distributed photovoltaic (PV) market is basically in its infancy, the feasibility of project investment and development is still unclear.

Method This paper analysed the key factors influencing the investment and development process of industrial and commercial distributed PV projects in Sichuan and Chongqing region around four aspects: light resources, construction conditions, power tariff structure and equipment investment costs. It derived boundary conditions for investment and development feasibility under different application scenarios.

Result Firstly, the optimal installation tilt angle of PV in Sichuan and Chongqing region is from 14° to 20°, but appropriately lowering the installation tilt angle can take into the account the installed capacity per unit area and the irradiation amount on the sloped surface, thus obtaining higher power generation; secondly, N-type PV modules, especially heterojunction PV modules, have better low-light performance, which can bring about higher incremental power generation; thirdly, a comprehensive industrial and commercial power tariff structures and PV generation yield the investment boundary for the Chongqing region is wider than that of the Sichuan Basin.

Conclusion Distributed PV projects in Sichuan and Chongqing region can be optimised to achieve power generation improvement through the installation conditions, component selection and system efficiency assessment, and with further cost reduction and efficiency increasing of the components, the internal clean substitution projects are generally economically efficient, but the external investment and development projects still need to be further screened in combination with the agreements on power tariffs, resource endowment and installed capacity scale.