18 January 2023
Last week Green Building Africa reported that a group of German researchers had published a new georeferenced database for large-scale wind, solar and hydropower projects in Africa.
The data is open access so we have extracted information from the database and added it as an additional layer to the AmaranthMaps' Southern Africa Power Map. We have differentiated between Operating, Project Development and Decommissioned plants and projects using the relevant dates provided in the database. Otherwise, the data is unchanged.
It consists of 1 074 hydroelectric, 1 128 solar and 276 wind plants and projects. The data does not precisely match the existing Generation data in the Southern African Power Map as it appears the researchers have used a more generous definition of what constitutes a project. The AmaranthMaps' approach is, with the possible exception of some hydropower projects, that a project must be well advanced before it is logged in our database. We think a project must have either a credible developer, credible financier or credible off-taker involved or actually be in construction before it is considered "real". Too many projects never progress beyond the press release and signing ceremony.
The report in Green Building Africa can be accessed here.
The original article can be accessed in the journal Nature here. The academic citation is as follows "Peters, R., Berlekamp, J., Tockner, K. et al. RePP Africa – a georeferenced and curated database on existing and proposed wind, solar, and hydropower plants. Sci Data 10, 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01922-1"
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