Enough Solar Panels To Power The World

It would take 51 4 billion 350w solar panels to power the world.

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. 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. 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. Put another way this is the equivalent of a solar power plant that covers 115 625 square miles.

We receive a staggering 1 74 1017 watts of energy from it. It has been estimated that given current solar panel efficiency rates of about 20 it would take us covering a landmass area the size of spain with solar panels in order to power the world in. Map courtesy of google maps. A total of 51 42 billion solar panels would be needed to power the entire world on solar energy.

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 additions last year. The earth s current energy consumption rate is around 13 5 tw at any given moment including oil gas coal nuclear and hydroelectric. 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.

The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. How do we arrive at this number. 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.