Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation (PVPA) projects, which utilize the subsidies and income from PV power to alleviate poverty in rural areas, are part of a comprehensive energy policy innovation in China. It is expected that the projects will deploy at least 10 GW PV and benefit more than two million poor households in total by 2020. To achieve this goal, specific supporting policies and novel business models are necessary. In the present paper, the current status and existing supporting policies are introduced to give an overview of PVPA projects. Then representative business models in PV projects are summarized and compared to provide a reference for PVPA projects. Obstacles, such as subsidy delays, insufficient infrastructure, low quality of PV equipment, and inflexible profit allocation mechanism may reduce the revenue from PV operation and increase the costs of PV deployment. Therefore, this paper also proposes corresponding recommendations for policy makers considering the existing challenges. •The financial yield of Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation (PVPA) is analyzed.•The major policies for PVPA and photovoltaic (PV) industry are summarized.•Novel business models for PV projects are analyzed and compared.•Challenges in PVPA are summarized and corresponding strategies are proposed.