Novel database on existing, planned renewables, solar projects in Africa

Researchers from Germany have created a new georeference database for large-scale wind, solar and hydropower projects in Africa. The Renewable Power Plant Database for Africa (RePP Africa) features 1,074 hydropower projects, 1,128 solar plants, and 276 wind power assets. It provides geographic coordinates, construction status, and capacity for each of them.

“RePP Africa lists more renewable power plants with cumulated capacity,” said the scientists.

They removed canceled projects and added new plants that were not identified by previous databases. They then georeferenced all data records.

“Data records were compiled and processed from various sources for all African countries,” the scientists stated. “Most solar power plants (1072) are operating or proposed as photovoltaic (PV), 47 as concentrated solar power (CSP), and 9 as concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) type plants.”

The database currently shows that in Africa there are 411 solar projects totaling 10.56 GW that are in operation or under construction and 717 solar facilities under development with a combined capacity of 53.32 GW.

The researchers presented the database in “RePP Africa – a georeferenced and curated database on existing and proposed wind, solar, and hydropower plants,” which was recently published in Scientific Data. The research team includes academics from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, the University of Osnabrück, and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research.

“The contemporary, curated database on renewable power plants (existing, under construction, proposed) in African countries will enable the research community to address and fill current research gaps and to advance integrated renewable energy modeling,” they concluded.

In November, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a dataset with 10,905 sites for PV deployment across Africa, with an estimated total capacity of 4.9 TW.