How Many Solar Panels Power The World

A total of 51 42 billion solar panels would be needed to power the entire world on solar energy.

How many solar panels power the world.

By the end of 2019 a cumulative amount of 629 gw of solar power was installed throughout the world. Current solar panels can only capture 20 percent of the sun s energy and to become a viable wide scale source of energy for the world they would need to capture much more than that. To put this into perspective this is about 10 000 times more than what humans need. 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.

Put another way this is the equivalent of a solar power plant that covers 115 625 square miles. By early 2020 the leading country for solar power was china with 208 gw accounting for one third of global installed solar capacity. It would take 51 4 billion 350w solar panels to power the world.