• The concepts of moment and barycenter of PV and load distributions are given. • The PV Barycenter Theory with three metrics is proposed for the first time. • A quick PV maximum hosting capacity assessment method is established. • The rapidity, accuracy, practicability and universality of the method are verified. High penetration distributed PV deployment will lead to serious power quality problems and a significant active power return, posing a serious threat to the safe and stable operation of distribution networks. This paper proposes an innovative fast assessment method of distributed PV maximum H osting C apacity (HC) of distribution networks based on P V B arycenter T heory (PBT). The new concepts of moment and barycenter are proposed, and the global metric GM of PV barycenter is achieved. The non-iterative formulas of HC that meet the node voltage upper limit and the conductor ampacity upper limit are derived, and the local metric LM1 of voltage upper limit and the local metric LM2 of ampacity upper limit are obtained. Together with the global metric GM, a complete PV Barycenter Theory is constituted. A new quick assessment method for HC of distributed PV in distribution networks is proposed. This method is applied to four 10kV distribution feeders in Chengde, Hebei Electric Power Company. The calculation results in all scenarios show that, compared to the classical Monte Carlo method, the new method boosts the average calculation efficiency by 4856 times while maintaining a 0.83% average error. The proposed method can also take into account the real-world constraints such as the existing PV capacity of the distribution networks and the exploitable PV capacity of the deploying point, making the deployment scheme more practical and feasible. The comprehensive analysis results on load rate sensitivity and PV penetration all verify the rapidity, accuracy, practicability and universality of this method.