A Novel Hybrid Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Machine Learning Framework for Solar PV Suitability Mapping in China

As technological progress and population growth continue to drive rising energy demand, renewable energy has emerged as a key focus of the global energy transition due to its environmental sustainability. However, in suitability assessments and site selection for green energy projects such as photovoltaic (PV) power generation, key criteria such as supply–demand balance and land price are often inadequately considered, despite their direct impact on decision outcomes. Moreover, excessive reliance on expert judgment for weighting, along with the neglect of inter-criterion relationships, introduces uncertainty. Combined with the presence of ill-posed problems, these issues limit the practical value of the evaluation results. This study integrates economic cost–benefit analysis into the evaluation criteria system alongside climatic and geographical criteria, constructing a set of 11 spatial indicators, including global horizontal irradiation (GHI), land prices, and regional power demand, to support PV site selection. Furthermore, a comprehensive evaluation framework is proposed that combines geographic information systems (GIS), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), fuzzy comprehensive evaluation (FCE), and machine learning (ML). The framework enables the collaborative optimization of expert-constrained and data-driven criteria weighting. A national suitability zoning map for PV power plants was developed and validated against actual construction cases. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology outperforms traditional approaches, achieving a 0.1178 improvement in weight determination compared to expert-based methods, producing a photovoltaic suitability map that more accurately reflects actual construction trends, thereby providing better and more effective support for PV site planning.