Africa Platform

Solar global horizontal irradiation
African countries have an evident potential for solar energy. Knowing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface is of particular interest for photovoltaic installations. It can be represented by the Global Horizontal Irradiation: the total amount of energy received from the Sun by a surface horizontal to the ground during a period of time, expressed in Wh/m2. This map shows the yearly average (2005-2015) global horizontal irradiation (kWh/m2).

Data provider

EC-JRC
Suggested citation

Huld, T., Müller, R. and Gambardella, A., 2012. "A new solar radiation database for estimating PV performance in Europe and Africa". Solar Energy, 86, 1803-1815.
Related tool or portal

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/pvgis
Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Date or time period of observation

2005-2015
Frequency of update

Not Updated
Geographic coverage

Africa
Spatial Resolution

1km
Technical background

The Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS) is a web application for the estimation of the performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems in Europe and Africa. The solar radiation data available on PVGIS are long-term averages, calculated from hourly global irradiance values (satellite data sourced from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB - https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/)) over the time period 2005-2015, taking into account both day and night-time, and measured in kW/m2. More information available at: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/PVGIS/docs/methods
Cautions

As modules and photovoltaic (PV) systems are generally installed at an inclined angle (compared to the horizontal plane) to maximize the received irradiance, the satellite retrieved irradiance values (global horizontal irradiation) must be adapted to be representative of the solar radiation available at the module surface.
Related SDGs and targets

GOAL 07: Affordable and clean energy,
Related Topics

Climate Change, Climate Services, Energy, Energy Production, Clean & Renewable Energy

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