Amount Of Solar Panels Needed To Power The Us

It is still unclear how ancient people could store the sun s energy and power their homes at night.

Amount of solar panels needed to power the us.

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. This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. Compare solar quotes on the energysage marketplace customized to your property and energy needs. Updated june 25 2020 a typical american home will need 14 36 solar panels to cover their power bill and at least 227 square feet of rooftop space to accommodate the solar panels.

Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today. Solar power is more affordable accessible and prevalent in the united states than ever before. Since the beginning of 2014 the average cost of solar photovoltaic pv panels has dropped nearly 50 2. 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.

This is derived from the fact that every year the u. There s 1 8 billion acres of land in the usa so about 0 6 of our land is all it would take. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. Follow along to calculate the amount of solar panels your specific home will need.

According to ancient research egyptians were the first civilization to use solar energy to power their homes. Map courtesy of google maps. Given 1kw of panels produces 1642 kwh per year in ca and 1kw of panels takes up 68 42 square feet solar panels installed in california on average produce 23 99 kwh kilowatt hours per square foot per year. 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.

Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. Solar would have to produce about 4 million gwh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire usa. The sun is also used to provide solar energy to many homes.

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. An average homeowner needs 28 to 34 solar panels to fully offset their electricity bill with solar. You can use the table of solar power production per kw for each state above to do the same math for your state. The number of panels you need for your house depends on factors like location and panel performance.