How Many Solar Panels To Run The World

Starting with some conservative assumptions from a 2013 national renewable energy labs nrel report we know that it takes on average 3 4 acres of solar panels to generate a gigawatt hour of electricity over a year.

How many solar panels to run the world.

Similarly the union territory of diu is fully run by solar power. You will need a roof space of about 340 sq ft for a 5kw system. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. So you re saying it would only take 0 6 of the surface area of the continental united states to power the entire country with renewable solar power.

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. To put this into perspective this is about 10 000 times more than what humans need. Cochin international airport seventh busiest in india is the first one in the world to run entirely on solar power handling more than 1 000 flights a week. A better approach is to look at real world data captured from real world solar arrays and just extrapolate from there.

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. You will need a roof space of about 194 sq ft for a 3kw system. Here we are supposing a panel size of 350w for the calculated size of 18tw of solar plants.

How do we arrive at this number. 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. Solar power features prominently in modi government s us 2 5 billion saubhagya scheme launched in july 2015 to electrify. A 3kw solar system which consists of 12 panels can produce an average of 4 200 kwh per year.

This is roughly equal to the area of spain. We receive a staggering 1 74 10 17 watts of energy from it.