Solar Panel Needed To Power The World

We would need 74 16 million acres or about 115 625 square miles to build an 18 54 tw solar plant.

Solar panel needed to power the world.

Map courtesy of google maps. The earth s current energy consumption rate is around 13 5 tw at any given moment including oil gas coal nuclear and hydroelectric. Currently the existing infrastructure in the nation churns out over 4000 billion kwh every year. 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.

The us energy information administration s estimation of global energy consumption by 2030 is 678 quadrillion btu 198 721 800 000 000 kilowatt hours simple conversion divided by 400. How much are 21 250 square miles. Here we are supposing a panel size of 350w for the calculated size of 18tw of solar plants. We receive a staggering 1 74 10 17 watts of energy from it.

To put this into perspective this is about 10 000 times more than what humans need. 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. That means a daily average of almost 11 billion kwh. If we were to think of the solar panels needed to power the entire world a significantly large portion of that would be needed for the u s.

Find trusted solar panel needed power world supplier and manufacturers that meet your business needs on exporthub qualify evaluate shortlist and contact solar panel needed power world companies on our free supplier directory and product sourcing platform. 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. Surface area requirement for solar panels to power the world a 1 mw solar pv power plant takes up roughly 4 acres of space.