How Much Solar Panels To Power Usa

Since the beginning of 2014 the average cost of solar photovoltaic pv panels has dropped nearly 50 2.

How much solar panels to power usa.

The actual output you see depends on factors like shading orientation and sun hours. Map courtesy of google maps. This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. How much money would it be to power the united states of america on solar energy.

The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. There s 1 8 billion acres of land in the usa so about 0 6 of our land is all it would take. Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.

Requires about 4 petawatts of electricityover one year to run life as normal. You can freely compare solar quotes on the energysage marketplace to see how different wattage panels will affect your unique system. So you re saying it would only take 0 6 of the surface area of the continental united states to power the entire country with renewable solar power. 3 071 048 000 total panels 250 watt sharp nd 250qcs solar panel made in the usa 65 x39 each 3 071 048 000 total panels 767 762 000 000 watts.

Solar would have to produce about 4 million gwh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire usa. At 2 8 acres per gwh then about 11 200 000 acres of land would give us what we need to produce the 4 000 000 gwh of solar power. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita.

To put this into context 1 petawatt equals about 1 billion million watts. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. Answers based on 2012.

In this report nrel states that about 3 4 acres of solar panels are required to generate one gigawatt hour of electricity over the course of one year. How much money for solar panels.