They will include 2.18GW of community-level installations and residential rooftop arrays, in addition to roughly 2.98GW of ground-mount capacity, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA).

The projects will be built throughout the country, including Hebei, Hubei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan and Gansu provinces.

Solar will be installed in about 20,000 rural communities under the initiative, which was first announced in 2014, according to an online statement. 

The central government has urged provincial governments to work with local authorities to build the projects as quickly as possible, but did not disclose additional details about construction timelines. 

Plans to roll out the PV poverty reduction program have picked up pace since last year, when the State Council arranged for several state-owned banks to help provide financing support.

A number of PV manufacturers have already announced plans to install solar under the program, with JinkoSolar revealing earlier this month that it will supply developer Senyuan Electric with 300MW of PV modules for related projects in Henan province. 

Roughly 522 billion yuan ($77.5 billion) of grid extensions will be built in rural areas throughout the country under the current 13th Five-Year Plan to support the PV poverty alleviation scheme.