How Many Solar Panels To Power The Usa

About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s.

How many solar panels to power the usa. Requires about 4 petawatts of electricityover one year to run life as normal. 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. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. According to wood mackenzie the us is likely to install 3 million solar panels in 2021 and 4 million panels in 2023.

This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. 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. 767 762 000 000 watts 250 watts per panel 3 071 048 000 total panels.

To put this into context 1 petawatt equals about 1 billion million watts. It is also reported that total electricity consumption for the united states during 2012 was 3 694 650 million kwh million kilowatt hours. How much are 21 250 square miles. 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.

Obviously wind energy wouldn t be the only form of primary energy in the usa. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees. 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. 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. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.