How Many Solar Panels Are Used In 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 are used in the world. As of 2020 there are at least 37 countries around the world with a cumulative pv capacity of more than one gigawatt. The amount of solar power capacity expected to be added in the coming years is equivalent to 70 000 new solar panels every hour enough to cover 1 000 soccer pitches every day. By the end of 2019 a cumulative amount of 629 gw of solar power was installed throughout the world. Italy uses 16 361 mw china uses 8 300 mw usa 7 777 mw japan 6 914 mw spain 5 166 mw france 4 003 mw belgium and australia uses 2 650 mw each czech republic uses 2 072 mw.

To put this into perspective this is about 10 000 times more than what humans need. There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford. Many countries around the world use this nature friendly source and germany is ahead of all the countries by using 32 411 mw of solar power. American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees.

Germany has by far the highest capacity of solar photovoltaic power pv in the world at 32 4 gw 31 at the end of 2012. In 2008 the world used about 474 exajoules or 132 000 terawatt hours worth of energy from all sources. 1 newly connected pv systems worth 7 6 gw were added this year. The potential for global solar energy has been estimated to be about 3 times that at 1600 exajoules 444 000 terawatt hours.

1 germany s solar panels generated about 23 twh terawatt hours of electricity in 2012 which is impressive but still only covers 3 of the country s total electricity consumption. It is estimated that global solar power capacity will triple by 2022 driven by chinese demand and the ever falling cost of buying and installing solar panels.