By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
haxxiy on 23 October 2025
Edit Thread
SvennoJ said:

Data centers operate day and night though.

By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatt-hours. (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia).

Assuming AI is right (I used to do these kind of calculations myself, yeah it's easy to use AI, but losing some of my math skills and udnerstanding in the process...)

To produce 1,000 TW of power, a massive area of solar panels is needed, requiring an estimated 2 billion to 4 billion panels depending on their wattage, estimated at roughly 10,000 square kilometers or about 3,861 square miles. This estimate is based on an assumption that each square meter of panel can generate about 200 watts of power under ideal conditions, but in practice, the required area will be larger to account for real-world inefficiencies like weather and panel orientation.  


AI is expected to use 500 times as much by next year.

[...]

It takes ~800 GW worth of solar panels to generate roughly ~1,000 TWh in a year. So it's not 500 times as much electricity, is ~0.4 times as much.

Anyway, believe it or not, thousands of km² of manufactured solar panels a year are a reality. That's economics of scale for you. It may seem excessive to power the entire world with solar, but it'd be less than the area we've paved over with concrete in the past few decades alone.

Since the number of people employed in photovoltaics seems to grow at the square root of installed capacity, it'd probably take about 20 million people to service the entire world's electricity from solar panels (vs. ~12.5 million people working in power generation today, which seems an acceptable increase in total workforce given how much cheaper solar power is), and without accounting for further automation.

(Addendum: Of course, that doesn't deal with the problem of energy storage; it's just an example of what'd be possible with one renewable alone.)

Last edited by haxxiy - on 23 October 2025