Something to think about

China has recently announced that it has achieved the landmark figure of 1 terawatt of installed photovoltaic capacity. A figure that is not only as amazing as it sounds, as it continues to outperform the rest of the world, but it is also difficult to visualise the amount of surface area that would be needed to achieve this.

For example, if each panel is 1 square meter and generates 300 watts, then 1 TW (1 trillion watts) would require 3.33 billion panels. To make it more precise, if each panel is 2 meters long, then 3.33 billion panels would cover a total distance of 6.66 billion meters, or 6.66 million kilometres!

To put it into perspective, we would have enough panels to make a nice ring around the sun!

As a rule, it takes approximately 10 acres (0.04 square kilometres) to produce one megawatt (MW) of solar power. Since 1 terawatt (TW) equals 1,000,000 megawatts (MW), a terawatt of solar power would require around 10,000,000 acres, which is the equivalent of about 40,468 square kilometres.

The calculation above assumes an average solar irradiance of 170 W/m².

A more realistic estimate, accounting for these factors, suggests that a terawatt of solar could be generated from about 5,860 square kilometres, which is roughly the size of Belgium!