Land Needed to Run Entire World on Solar Power

Loster.com takes a look at how much land would be needed to power the entire world with solar cells.

Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide a little more than the world's current total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8 %). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells. The colors in the map show the local solar irradiance averaged over three years from 1991 to 1993 (24 hours a day) taking into account the cloud coverage available from weather satellites.

I like this because it gives you a good perspective as to how much space would be needed. Looked at this way, it does not appear to be that much land at all and all of the land he suggests is desert.

Location / Desert	Desert Size / km2	Irradiation / W m-2	Area required / km2
Africa, Sahara	9,064,960	260	144,231
Australia, Great Sandy	388,500	265	141,509
China, Takla Makan	271,950	210	178,571
Middle-East, Arabian	2,589,910	270	138,889
South America, Atacama	139,860	275	136,364
U.S.A., Great Basin	492,100	220	170,455

Now all we need is for the progress ratio to kick in and get solar panel prices down so that solar electricity is cheaper than burning coal. Hopefully sometime around 2023 if not sooner.

via loster.com via Wikipedia