Wind turbines above the village of Wesley, former Ciskei

Geospatial intelligence for a just transition

Stephen Forder's Energy Desk builds geospatial data, tools and media for Africa's renewable energy transition - supporting planners, researchers, landowners, communities and developers.

The database in numbers

A source-tracked database of South Africa's energy projects, maintained daily. Every data point carries its source, confidence and full change history.

Projects tracked
251
across 22 districts and regions
Capacity tracked
82,088 MW
generation and storage
Turbines mapped
2,076
individually placed from satellite imagery
Sourced field updates
3,066
every one attributed and dated
Updates, last 30 days
1,683
maintained continuously
Sources cited
136
distinct publishers in the change ledger

Public programmes vs private power

Where South Africa's new generation comes from: competitive public procurement alongside a fast-growing private and merchant pipeline.

Publicly procured
14,166 MW
142 projects under REIPPPP, RMIPPPP and peers
Private & merchant
3,889 MW
16 projects, wheeling and private offtake
State & municipal fleet
53,894 MW
operating capacity · 31 plants tracked in full
Wind
5,006 public · 2,021 private MW
Solar PV
8,483 public · 649 private MW
CSP
600 public · 0 private MW
Battery storage
0 public · 0 private MW
Public programmes Private & merchant
Fossil fuels: 25 Nuclear: 1 Renewables: 196 Storage: 27 Other / emerging: 2 Operational: 158 Under Construction: 26 Development: 25 Cancelled: 9 Financing: 7
Register interest in membership

Full project profiles, organisations, turbine fleets and change histories are available to members. Membership opens soon.

Powered by the Energy Desk

More than hosting, these sites are built on the Energy Desk geospatially enabled web platform, with effortless domain registration under energydesk.africa, rapid development, access to shared datasets like the maintained IPP database, and one account that works across every Energy Desk site a visitor is a member of.

The same platform for your site

Stephen Forder's Energy Desk builds and hosts sites for events and working groups, project teams, and membership organisations, all e-commerce enabled for event seats, subscriptions and paid downloads. It is built especially for NGOs, research programmes and small teams, putting capable web and geospatial infrastructure within reach without the cost of standing it up and maintaining it in-house.

Event sites Working group sites Project team sites Membership sites E-commerce enabled

Services

What Stephen Forder's Energy Desk does for clients and partners.

Web mapping & platforms

  • Interactive web maps and data portals (Web GIS), delivered on Stephen Forder's Energy Desk web platform
  • Geospatial mini-sites under your own branding, built and hosted by Stephen Forder's Energy Desk
  • Data APIs - authenticated, metered feeds from Energy Desk datasets into your own site or tools
  • Vector tile serving and custom basemaps
  • Single sign-on, e-commerce and paid downloads

Spatial analysis & decision support

  • Multi-criteria analysis (MCDA) for land, environment and infrastructure
  • Suitability and constraint mapping
  • Remote sensing and Earth observation analysis
  • Cartography and map production

Custom tools, automation & AI

  • Python geospatial scripting and reproducible pipelines
  • AI-augmented workflows - assisted data extraction, enrichment and monitoring with a human in the loop
  • Automated map and atlas production
  • Spatial databases and data integration (PostGIS)
  • Bespoke analysis workflows

Energy data & research

  • Maintained IPP / project database
  • Source-tracked datasets and project intelligence
  • Renewable-energy research and advisory
  • Just transition analysis

Photography & media

  • Photography and video commissions: site, project and event documentation
  • Energy-transition stock library: SDG-tagged, licence-ready imagery and footage