Morocco's PV Atlas

EarthPV CalibrationBronzeAbove 400 m² only.
No local calibration.
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Morocco PV capacity, by 0.1° cell
11 km × 11 km cells · log scale
MWp / cell
none detected
0MWp
Best estimate, the highest defensible figure
0
Training data hand-mapped in OpenStreetMap, ≥400 m²
0
Training data hand-mapped in OpenStreetMap, <400 m²
0
of 0.1° cells within the calibrated building-density range
Capacity
The same Sentinel-2-detectable total, by installation size
Capacity per size bin, rooftop and ground-mount stacked
linear scale · MWp · hover a bar for detail
rooftop
ground-mount (hatched)
rooftop, extrapolated beyond calibration
The same total photovoltaic capacity detectable with Sentinel-2, re-cut by installation size instead of geography: rooftop runs across every bin, while ground-mount sits almost entirely at ≥400 m², because below that only the farm ground-PV detector sees it, where it has been run. The detectors split the total by placement and size, not size alone.
Capacity
The same total, by method
Total Capacity
installations mapped in OpenStreetMap supplies 79% of Best; TerraMind segmentation of large arrays the remaining 21%.
Uncertainty
How sure each part of the Best estimate is
Point estimate and 90% credible interval, per component
log scale · MWp · hover a row for detail
Each row is one addend of the Best estimate; the top row is their sum. The intervals do not add up to the total's: components that share an error source were drawn together (one area-to-capacity constant for every rooftop figure, one for every ground-mount figure, one re-draw of the calibration areas for every roofclf figure), so the total's interval is narrower than the sum of the parts' intervals would suggest. A row without a whisker is a deterministic correction rather than a modelled quantity. The intervals cover measured errors only; "How confident should you be in this?" below lists what they leave out.
All component intervals
ComponentMWp90% low90% high
Context
Against official and published figures
National total
this atlas in MWp · other figures in MW as published

Sources and what each figure counts
    By province

    All province figures
    ProvinceThis atlas, BestReference Ratio
    Panel orientation
    Fitted tilt & azimuth, from Sentinel-2 glint
    Tilt (radius) × Azimuth (angle) 0 measured
    rooftop generator ground plant unreachable by this sensor's fixed overpass time
    0%
    of ≥ 1,000 m² installations get a pose in this plot at all -- the rest never produce two self-consistent spikes, so there's nothing to fit
    ≥1 spike, no fittable pose; 0%
    no glint signal at all 0%
    azimuth range observed –
    tilt IQR observed –

    What is PV glint and how is it detected?

    PV Glint is a brief, brighter-than-diffuse flash where a panel's specular reflection lines up with the sun and Sentinel-2's fixed overpass geometry on one date -- see the method page for the full derivation and an annotated image gallery. A single spike can't be checked for self-consistency -- 0% of installations glint once (or on dates that disagree on a panel geometry) and so are correctly detected as "PV is probably here" but carry no orientation information.

    Why the plot only fills part of the circle

    Sentinel-2 crosses this latitude at a fixed ~10:30 local time, so in every image of the survey window the sun's azimuth at the moment of overpass never once swings west of due south -- a panel facing southwest, west, or north cannot glint into this sensor no matter how long you wait. That's a sensor limit, not a property of rooftops here: the shaded wedge (0° wide) marks orientations this survey cannot observe at all, not orientations known to be empty. Nothing is plotted there, because nothing was measured there.

    Data: . Validated = a single (tilt, azimuth) explains ≥ 2 independent spike dates via the specular reflection condition, tolerance 3°. Point size ∝ √(installation area). Hover a point to see which installation it is; click it to open that installation in OpenStreetMap. The CSV download lists every point with its OSM id and coordinates. Full derivation of the glint signal this pose fit is built on: the method page. Annotated Sentinel-2 / high-res examples of what a validated spike actually looks like in the source imagery: the image gallery.

    Background
    How to read these numbers
    How the estimate is built the methods in plain language, what each can see, how they add up+
    How confident should you be in this? preliminary results, sampling caveats, independent corroboration+

    Best estimate: 411 MWp, with a 90% range of 361–554 MWp. The range covers two measured sources of uncertainty, not everything that could move this number. Below: what is inside the range, and what is not.

    Inside the range:

    • The two area-to-power constants. Panel area on a roof converts at about 0.18 kWp per m², the rating of a typical module; the outline of a ground-mounted park converts at about 0.05 kWp per m², measured on parks whose capacity is known. Each is varied over its own range (90%: 0.15–0.21 and 0.035–0.075 kWp per m²).
    • How reliable the segmentation model's detections are. How often its detections turn out to be real, and how many mapped arrays it misses, were measured size class by size class against mapped installations. Those measurements have their own sampling error, which is drawn into the range.

    Outside the range, and not something more arithmetic can add back:

    • No area of this country has been exhaustively mapped by hand to check these numbers against. The detectors' measured accuracy is carried over from the countries where it was measured, and how well it transfers here has not itself been measured. That is a different kind of uncertainty from the range above, and no amount of arithmetic converts one into the other.
    • The small-installation half of this page does not exist yet. No area of Morocco has been mapped panel by panel, so there is nothing to calibrate a per-building rooftop classifier against here. Everything on the map is either hand-mapped in OpenStreetMap or an array the segmentation model outlined directly, which in practice means installations of roughly 400 m² and up. Household rooftop systems are mostly below that size.
    • Imagery covers where people live, plus every mapped solar site. Map cells were imaged if they hold at least 1,000 buildings or any hand-mapped solar installation. A utility-scale park built on empty land that nobody has mapped yet falls outside both rules and is not on this page.
    • Concentrating solar power is not counted. The Noor Ouarzazate complex's trough and tower plants focus sunlight with mirrors rather than converting it in photovoltaic panels, so they are filtered out of the map and of the training labels. Its photovoltaic plant, Noor IV, is counted.
    • The map stops at 27°40′ N. The boundary layer this pipeline uses extends further south; this page follows the internationally recognized line instead, and the territory south of it is not included.

    Treat this as an early estimate from an active research pipeline, not a census. What it offers is a reproducible way to estimate distributed solar from free satellite imagery and open-source models where official statistics are thin or missing. Expect the figures to move as the evidence behind them grows.

    Nothing on this page rests on hand-mapped ground truth from this country. Exhaustively mapped areas -- every panel in a few square kilometres, drawn by hand -- are what turns a detection into a capacity estimate: they measure how much of a flagged roof is actually covered in panels, and how many real installations the detectors miss entirely. Until some exist here, read these figures accordingly. Mapping one is the most useful thing anyone can contribute.

    Using the map and exporting figures layers, your own data, downloads, licences+

    Layers. "Show" picks the quantity the cells are coloured by: the Best estimate, the OSM-mapped capacity alone, the satellite detections above 400 m², rooftop PV below it, farm ground PV below it (arrays beside fields, where the farm detector has run), or the gap between the Best estimate and what is already mapped, which is where mapping effort pays off most. Each cell shows its total in MWp. The colour scale is logarithmic and is refitted to whichever quantity is shown; the legend always states its range.

    Your own data. "Layers" → "Add a layer" overlays a GeoJSON file, a CSV with latitude/longitude columns, a GeoJSON URL, an XYZ raster tile URL or a WMS (use {bbox-epsg-3857} in its GetMap URL). Files are read in your browser and are not uploaded anywhere. The live OpenStreetMap overlay queries the public Overpass API for the area in view when you zoom in, so it shows mapping done after this page was built.

    Exports. Every figure downloads as PNG (for slides), SVG (vector, for papers) and CSV (the numbers behind it); the map as PNG with its legend and attribution, and the grid as GeoJSON or CSV. Basemap imagery and tiles keep their own providers' terms: OpenStreetMap data is © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), the grey canvas and the satellite imagery © Esri and its partners.

    Data
    Download the data behind this atlas
    Download the underlying data capacity parquets, calibration boundaries, pose survey, raw detections, model checkpoint+
    Live OSM PV, not this snapshot -- Overpass query
    [out:json][timeout:180]; area ["boundary"="administrative"] ["admin_level"="2"] ["ISO3166-1"="MA"] ->.searchArea; ( nwr["power"="generator"]["generator:source"="solar"](area.searchArea); nwr["power"="plant"]["plant:source"="solar"](area.searchArea); ); out geom;
    Paste into overpass-turbo.eu for an interactive map and GeoJSON export, or POST it as the data parameter to https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter from a script. The raw-detections download above predates this page and will go stale as mappers keep editing; this query always reflects live OSM state.
    Capacity data

    The capacity per grid cell shown on the map, as CSV. One row per 0.1° cell, generated in your browser from the data this page is drawing, so it is exactly the numbers above. lon0/lat0 are the south-west corner of the cell. The GeoParquet carries the cell polygon in EPSG:4326, so it opens directly in QGIS or GeoPandas.

    Download GeoParquet
    Add a data layer

    Overlay your own data on the capacity map. A file is read in your browser and never leaves it; a URL is fetched by your browser, so the server must allow cross-origin requests.