At first that sounds like a lot and it is.
Amount of solar panels needed to power the world.
An average homeowner needs 28 to 34 solar panels to fully offset their electricity bill with solar.
This number does look intimidating but with a large number of solar companies in u s.
The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles.
And as the report points out if this.
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.
Dividing the global yearly demand by 400 kw h per square meter 198 721 800 000 000 400 and we arrive at 496 804 500 000 square meters or 496 805 square kilometers 191 817 square miles as the area required to power the world with solar panels.
The number of panels you need for your house depends on factors like location and panel performance.
To put this into perspective this is about 10 000 times more than what humans need.
As of 2020 there are at least 37 countries around the world with a cumulative pv capacity of more than one gigawatt.
According to a graduate thesis by technical university of braunschweig student nadine may the number of solar panels needed to supply the entire world s energy needs would fill just 25 000 square.
A total of 51 42 billion solar panels would be needed to power the entire world on solar energy.
This is roughly equal to the area of spain.
Here we are supposing a panel size of 350w for the calculated size of 18tw of solar plants.
Map courtesy of google maps.
After all we don t have dual suns that permit us to soak up solar energy 24 hours a day and there will be inevitable interruptions in power relay due to maintenance or any number of incidents.
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.
By the end of 2019 a cumulative amount of 629 gw of solar power was installed throughout the world.
According to the analysis we would need around 1 1 million square kilometers of solar panels to power the whole earth or an area the size of south africa.
It can be turned into reality.