How Many Solar Panels To Power Usa

I chose a 250 watt sharp nd 250qcs solar panel made in the usa 65 x39 each.

How many solar panels to power usa. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. 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. Obviously wind energy wouldn t be the only form of primary energy in the usa. 767 762 000 000 watts 250 watts per panel 3 071 048 000 total panels.

It is also reported that total electricity consumption for the united states during 2012 was 3 694 650 million kwh million kilowatt hours. There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford. Solar hydro geothermal and biofuels will also play roles with solar being at least equal to wind generation. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s.

This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity. Map courtesy of google maps.

American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees.