Estimating Photovoltaic capacity using customs data : Model development of the tool NJORD and photovoltaics' characterization and impact on the African continent

Abstract: Photovoltaics (PV) is one of the fastest growing power sources in the world in the last twenty years, being the most installed power source in almost half of the world's countries in 2020. Despite this, precise tracking of installations of PV does not exist in most of the world's markets due to PVs unique scalability and modularity. One way to try to estimate how much PV is installed in the world is by following trade data between countries, which is the goal of NJORD. In NJORD the installed capacity of PV is estimated in the world by following the trade of PV as closely as possible and calculating an estimation based on module prices, weights and other factors collected from the market. The ITC reports trade in different levels, 6-digits codes called HS-codes are the most precise codes that are shared between all countries reporting to ITC, and NTL-codes that are more precise than the HS-codes but individual per country. By identifying existing NTL-codes and incorporating them into the NJORD models, estimations can be made that lie within 10% of the reported publicized data for a set of reference countries with credible PV reporting. Using the same estimation criteria, the model can also estimate installed PV capacity in most of the countries in the world. The NJORD model finds that most countries in the world have PV capacity installed, and that the best reports from the African continent miss some capacity.  The estimated PV capacity installed on the African continent correlates with the reported performance towards multiple SDGs, showing that PV has an impact on the continent with the clearest impact on SDG7 “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”, but also an impact on health through a decrease in lung-disease. Off-grid PV plays a large part on the African PV market and it is hard to monitor due to the small size of the systems. NJORD can capture these systems in the estimations in a way that is difficult for the classic collection of data.