Amount Of Solar Panels Needed To Power The Us

There s 1 8 billion acres of land in the usa so about 0 6 of our land is all it would take.

Amount of solar panels needed to power the us.

Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today. Follow along to calculate the amount of solar panels your specific home will need. Since the beginning of 2014 the average cost of solar photovoltaic pv panels has dropped nearly 50 2. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita.

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. Speaking of residential plans the amount of solar panels needed to power an average homecan be anywhere between 7 and 100 depending on how large the house and its consumption is. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. 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.

It is still unclear how ancient people could store the sun s energy and power their homes at night. 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. Solar power is more affordable accessible and prevalent in the united states than ever before.

According to ancient research egyptians were the first civilization to use solar energy to power their homes. The number of panels you need for your house depends on factors like location and panel performance. In case of large systems as a rule of thumb a typical solar system of 1mw capacity requires an area of 5 acres or over 200 000 square feet. Consumes about 4 petawatt hours of electricity per year we d need about 13 600 000 acres or 21 250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the united states for a year.

Solar would have to produce about 4 million gwh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire usa. An average homeowner needs 28 to 34 solar panels to fully offset their electricity bill with solar. Compare solar quotes on the energysage marketplace customized to your property and energy needs. The sun is also used to provide solar energy to many homes.

The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. Map courtesy of google maps. This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. You can use the table of solar power production per kw for each state above to do the same math for your state.