Africa Platform

Annual photovoltaic energy yield
African countries have an evident potential for solar energy. Knowing what amount of solar radiation reaches the earth's surface is of particular interest for solar photovoltaic (PV) installations. It can be represented by the average annual potential energy production (or yield): the total amount of electricity (kWh) produced in one year by a 1 kWp PV system at optimal angle, expressed in kWh/kWp.

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. Huld, T.; Moner-Girona, M.; Kriston, A. Geospatial Analysis of Photovoltaic Mini-Grid System Performance. Energies 2017, 10, 218
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

5 km
Technical background

The values mapped in this layer consist of annual average values of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy production [kWh] at optimal angle. They are sourced form the Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS), 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, considering both day and night-time, and measured in W/m2. More information available at: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/PVGIS/docs/methods
Cautions

-
Related SDGs and targets

GOAL 07: Affordable and clean energy,
Related Topics

Energy, Energy Production, Energy Access, Clean & Renewable Energy