China has entered the crucial period of poverty alleviation. Photovoltaic poverty alleviation, as an ideal mode of poverty alleviation, can not only provide stable income for poor households, but also promote the development of new energy industries. However, several issues happening in some regions may seriously hamper the sustainable development of photovoltaic poverty alleviation. For this reason, we establish a tripartite evolutionary game model to simulate and analyze the behavior strategies of PV enterprises, poor households, and the government, and the relevant influencing factors. Moreover, the game model is verified by empirical analysis. Results demonstrate that: (i) there are four evolutionary stable strategies for the photovoltaic project, among which the initiative support of PV enterprises, the participation of poor households and less supervision of the government is a more appropriate choice. (ii) a threshold effect exists in relevant parameters, which may change the evolutionary stable strategies of PV enterprises or poor households. (iii) the initial willingness of PV enterprises, poor households and the government affects the convergence speed of the evolutionary stable strategy. (iv) increasing performance-based subsidies appropriately and perfecting the income distribution mechanism can guarantee the sustainable development of photovoltaic projects. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.