6 Solar Facts That Will Change the Way You Think About Energy

_{^{By The Little Green Energy Company | 5 min read}}

Most people know solar panels generate electricity and cut bills. Fewer people know quite how staggeringly powerful — and strategically inevitable — solar energy already is. These six facts aren’t just interesting. They’re genuinely perspective-shifting. And for anyone in Kent considering whether now is the right time to go solar, they’re also quietly persuasive.

1. The Sun Hits Texas With More Energy in One Hour Than the Whole World Uses in a Day

If you could somehow capture every photon of sunlight that falls on the state of Texas in a single peak hour, you’d have more energy than 8 billion people consume across an entire day.

Texas covers roughly 696,000 square kilometres. With peak solar irradiance of around 1,000 W/m², one hour of sunlight delivers an estimated 696 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy to that single state. For context, global daily energy consumption is approximately 432 TWh (based on average global power demand of around 18 terawatts). One hour. One state. More energy than the planet uses in 24 hours.


_{Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (eia.gov), with calculations based on Texas land area and peak solar irradiance.}


What this means closer to home: Kent is one of the sunniest counties in mainland Britain. Folkestone ranks as the second sunniest town in the entire UK, with an average of 1,932 sunshine hours per year. A typical 3.5 kWp solar system there generates around 5,068 kWh annually — more than enough to cover the average household’s electricity needs. You don’t need Texas-scale sunshine to make solar work. You need a south-facing roof in Maidstone.

2. The Sun Delivers Roughly 10,000 Times More Energy Than Humanity Uses — Every Single Day

Here’s where numbers become genuinely hard to picture. Humanity currently consumes around 15 to 18 terawatts of power continuously — that’s every factory, every data centre, every kettle, every electric car on Earth, running simultaneously, all the time.

The sun delivers approximately 173,000 terawatts of power to our planet continuously. Not 173 — 173,000. That’s roughly 10,000 times more than we use. Every second of every day.

The challenge has never been whether there’s enough solar energy. The challenge has always been capture and storage. Panels convert sunlight to electricity. Batteries store it for when the sun isn’t shining. That combination — the same one The Little Green Energy Company installs across Kent, Surrey and Sussex — is the elegant answer to a very simple equation.

^{_{Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy; standard solar physics data.}}

3. China Manufactures 80% of the World’s Solar Panels — and That’s Actually Transformed the Market for British Homeowners

China currently manufactures around 80% of the world’s solar panels and accounts for approximately one third of global installed solar capacity. It also dominates the supply chains for polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules — the component layers that make a modern panel.

This level of vertical integration has achieved something remarkable: it has driven the cost of solar panels down by more than 90% since 2010. A kilowatt of installed solar capacity that cost over £4,000 in the early days of the market now costs a fraction of that. The same technology — in fact, significantly better technology — is accessible to homeowners across Kent who would have been priced out a decade ago.

This isn’t an abstract geopolitical fact. It’s the reason solar has moved from a niche luxury to a mainstream home improvement that pays for itself.


_{Source: Global Energy Monitor — China’s Solar and Onshore Wind Capacity report.}

Worth noting for discerning buyers: Not all panels are equal, even within Chinese manufacturing. The highest-performing panels — such as the SunPower models we install at TLGEC — use premium cell technology that delivers 60% more energy than the industry average and comes backed by a 40-year warranty. The market has scaled. The quality ceiling has also risen dramatically.

4. Some of the World’s Largest Oil Refineries Are Installing Solar Panels — Not for PR, But to Cut Their Own Costs

This is perhaps the most quietly telling solar fact of all.

Koch Industries — one of America’s largest private corporations, with subsidiaries spanning oil refining, petrochemicals and fossil fuel distribution — built a 45-megawatt solar farm comprising more than 100,000 panels directly on-site at its Pine Bend oil refinery in Minnesota. The stated reason was straightforward: to cut costs and improve energy efficiency.

When the companies financially most committed to fossil fuels start installing solar on their own facilities because it makes economic sense, the argument that solar is ideologically motivated rather than commercially rational rather collapses.

Solar’s economics are simply compelling. And if they’re compelling enough for an oil refinery in Minnesota, they are very likely compelling enough for a four-bedroom house in Tunbridge Wells.

The logic Koch applied — specifying high-output, high-durability panels to maximise long-term ROI rather than simply buying the cheapest option — is exactly the same logic behind the SunPower Maxeon panels installed by TLGEC. When you’re designing for a 40-year return, panel quality isn’t a luxury. It’s the calculation.

_{Source: Koch Inc. Environmental Stewardship page; DEPCOM Power press release; EPA ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award documentation (2023).}

5. One Shipload of Solar Panels Is Worth More to the Grid Than 120 Ships of Coal

This is the statistic that stops conversations.

According to the International Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2024 report, a single large container ship filled with solar PV modules can generate — once those panels are installed — as much electricity as the coal from more than 100 large bulk ships. Updated analysis from early 2025, accounting for improvements in panel efficiency, has revised that figure upward: one shipload of solar now equates to approximately 120 coal carriers, or 57 LNG tankers.

The reason comes down to a fundamental difference in how the technologies work. Coal is burned once to generate heat, much of which is wasted in the conversion to electricity. Solar panels, once manufactured and installed, convert sunlight to electricity directly — and they keep doing it for 25 to 40 years, with no ongoing fuel cost, no combustion, no waste heat, and no emissions.

Roughly 40% of all global bulk shipping is the transportation of fossil fuels. Those ships themselves run on fossil fuels. The system is, at its core, extraordinarily inefficient. Solar — manufactured once, shipped once, installed once, generating clean electricity for four decades — is something structurally different.

And for anyone in Kent: the next time you look out over the English Channel and watch the shipping lanes, consider what those vessels are carrying. The bulk carriers are almost certainly transporting fuel that will be burned once and gone. One of those container ships, loaded instead with high-efficiency solar panels, would — once installed — outperform 120 of them.

_{Sources: IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2024; RenewEconomy (reneweconomy.com.au); Follow This (follow-this.org).}

Bonus Fact: The UK Has Already Made Its Decision

If the global picture above feels abstract, here’s what the British government’s own data says right now.

As of February 2025, the UK has crossed 18 gigawatts of operational solar PV across 1,735,000 completed installations — a figure published directly by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). That’s 1.7 million households and businesses that have already committed to generating their own clean power.

And the government has made its own bet on where this goes next. The Clean Power Action Plan, published on GOV.UK, sets a formal target of 45 to 47 gigawatts of installed solar capacity by 2030. That’s a near-tripling of the entire UK solar fleet in under five years — the single largest planned expansion of any electricity source in the country.

This isn’t ideology. It’s infrastructure policy. When a government commits publicly to tripling a technology by a specific date, the supply chains, grid connections, planning frameworks and financial incentives all follow. Homeowners who install now do so into a system that is actively designed to support and reward them.

_{Sources: DESNZ Solar PV Deployment Statistics, February 2025; GOV.UK Clean Power Action Plan.}

What These Facts Mean if You Live in Kent

Kent isn’t just a good county for solar — it’s the heart of the UK’s solar story.

In July 2025, the Cleve Hill Solar Park on the north Kent coast became fully operational. At 373 megawatts across 550,000 panels, it is the UK’s largest solar farm by a significant margin — more than four times the capacity of the next largest installation in the entire country. It powers over 102,000 homes and sits near Faversham, just inland from the Channel coast. This is not a future project. It is generating clean electricity right now, at national scale, from the same Kent landscape that surrounds TLGEC’s customers.

And the timing matters. 2025 was officially the UK’s sunniest year on record, according to the Met Office — beating the previous record, set in 2003, by more than 60 hours of sunshine. It was also the year solar made its greatest-ever contribution to Britain’s energy supply: providing over 6% of the country’s electricity for the full year, nearly 50% more than in recent years. On 8th July 2025, solar set a new national record — supplying over 14 gigawatts to the grid, meeting more than 40% of Britain’s total electricity demand at that moment.

That milestone happened on a summer’s day in the UK. Not in Texas. Not in Spain. Here.

Kent sits at the sunnier, warmer end of the British climate. The county’s households collectively generate an estimated 146 GWh of solar electricity per year, and solar panel installations across the county are saving approximately 29,200 tonnes of CO₂ annually. A typical Kent home with a solar and battery system saves between £680 and £940 per year on energy bills — figures drawn from our own recent case studies in Hawkhurst, Mayfield and Crawley.

The facts above aren’t aspirational. They describe a technology that has already won the economic argument — one that an oil refinery adopted because the numbers made sense, that the IEA now measures in units of “ships,” and that has its national flagship site on the north Kent coast, a few miles from the homes we install for every week.

If you’d like to understand what a solar and battery system could do for your home or business specifically, the team at The Little Green Energy Company offers free, no-obligation consultations. We’ve been installing across Kent, Surrey and Sussex since 2010, with over 1,000 installs and a 10-year Which? Trusted Trader endorsement.

Get a free quote today →
Or call us on 01622 832 834

_{If you’d like to understand what a solar and battery system could do for your home or business specifically, the team at The Little Green Energy Company offers free, no-obligation consultations. We’ve been installing across Kent, Surrey and Sussex since 2010, with over 1,000 installs and a 10-year Which? Trusted Trader endorsement.}

Sources & Further Reading

• U.S. Energy Information Administration: eia.gov
• Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy: energyinst.org/statistical-review
• Global Energy Monitor — China’s Solar Capacity Report: globalenergymonitor.org
• Koch Inc. Environmental Stewardship: kochinc.com/stewardship
• IEA Energy Technology Perspectives 2024: iea.org
• RenewEconomy: reneweconomy.com.au
• Follow This: follow-this.org
• DESNZ Solar PV Deployment Statistics (February 2025): gov.uk/government/statistics/solar-photovoltaics-deployment
• GOV.UK Clean Power Action Plan: gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan
• Met Office — 2025 UK’s Sunniest Year on Record: metoffice.gov.uk
• Cleve Hill Solar Park — Quinbrook Commercial Operations Announcement (July 2025): quinbrook.com