Research progress and hot topics of distributed photovoltaic: Bibliometric analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation model

Distributed photovoltaic (PV) are instrumental in promoting energy transformation and reducing carbon emission. A large number of studies in recent years have focused on distributed PV from different perspectives and approaches, but there is a lack of a systematic review of the research literature, which affects the future developments. Thus, we undertook a bibliometric analysis of 1366 articles on distributed PV published in the Web of Science during 1985–2023, and applied a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model to identify research hotspots and evolution. Our results indicate that the number of publications on distributed PV increased since 1985. China and the USA are the most influential countries, with the highest number of publications and citations, and the highest publication impact (H-index). Furthermore, four research hotspots were identified: (1) technoeconomic analysis, PV adoption and support policies; (2) optimization design of distributed PV systems; (3) related technology and equipment; (4) distributed PV power output. Research on distributed PV was unstable in the early stages; these four stable research hotspots emerged since 2010. Finally, some conclusions and policy implications are given. Our study will serve as a reference for further in-depth research and facilitate the deployment of distributed PV to foster sustainable development in the world.