Enough Solar Panels To Power The World

How do we arrive at this number.

Enough solar panels to power the world. And europe solar installations have dropped 30 due to pandemic india and china are leading the world in solar power programs by 2024 china s deployment of solar panels will far. Solar additions last year. By another measure the unpopulated area of the sahara desert is over 9 million km which if covered with solar panels would provide 630 terawatts total power. Solar capture areas would have to be distributed over a wide area to avoid the problem of cloudy days or storms or other weather events that would obscure the sun pouring down onto your energy farm.

The current standard size of panels used in a large sized solar plant is easily over 350w. Consumes about 4 petawatt hours of electricity per year we d need about 13 600 000 acres or 21 250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the united states for a year. It would take 51 4 billion 350w solar panels to power the world. Here we are supposing a panel size of 350w for the calculated size of 18tw of solar plants.

A total of 51 42 billion solar panels would be needed to power the entire world on solar energy. Now if we cover an area of the earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today it will provide more than 17 4 tw power. Map courtesy of google maps. Put another way this is the equivalent of a solar power plant that covers 115 625 square miles.

Assuming this power rating we would need to divide 2 75 tw by 350w which gives us the gigantic number of 7 85 billion 7 857 142 857 to be precise panels required. For the first time ever solar and wind made up the majority of the world s new power generation marking a seismic shift in how nations get their electricity. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles.