How Many Solar Panels To Power The Usa

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.

How many solar panels to power the usa.

How much are 21 250 square miles. Obviously wind energy wouldn t be the only form of primary energy in the usa. Requires about 4 petawatts of electricityover one year to run life as normal. 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.

767 762 000 000 watts 250 watts per panel 3 071 048 000 total panels. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. 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.

According to wood mackenzie the us is likely to install 3 million solar panels in 2021 and 4 million panels in 2023. To put this into context 1 petawatt equals about 1 billion million watts. There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles.

It is also reported that total electricity consumption for the united states during 2012 was 3 694 650 million kwh million kilowatt hours. Solar hydro geothermal and biofuels will also play roles with solar being at least equal to wind generation. I chose a 250 watt sharp nd 250qcs solar panel made in the usa 65 x39 each. The total number of solar installations in the us is on its way to get more than double in the next 5 years and it will consolidate the industry and provide economic strength.

Map courtesy of google maps. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.