In October 2022, SAPVIA embarked on the task to accurately quantify the amount of Solar PV installations in South Africa. SAPVIA, in collaboration with GeoTerra Image, a South African GIS and data handling firm, alongside PrimeThought, a local software development company and owner of spatial excel, a locally developed GIS interpretation tool, concluded an agreement to develop, market and launch a Solar PV database and Data product to the market. We are happy to announce that the portal is now ready!

The project's aim was to accurately quantify the installed capacity of solar PV in South Africa by feeding satellite imagery into a machine learning algorithm that accurately classifies and quantifies the location, number of panels and the size of the Solar PV system.

High level snippets of the solar PV data will be made publicly available via the SAPVIA website, while deeper levels of data up to a provincial level segmented by system and building type will be made available exclusively to SAPVIA members through a dedicated data portal. It is envisaged that the captured data will be incorporated into quarterly market intelligence reports that SAPVIA will produce and release to the market.

For more on the portal, please click here​.