How Many Solar Panels To Power The Usa

The fundamental solar energy stats.

How many solar panels to power the usa. The batteries you need to store the energy to make sure you have 24 7 power is 1 mile by 1 mile. As of the end of 2018 the u s. Japan s panasonic through its partnership with tesla has some of the largest capacity for manufacturing solar panels in the us at tesla s gigafactory 2 in buffalo ny the companies are building high quality monocrystalline solar cells and panels. Electric total every year since 2013.

767 762 000 000 watts 250 watts per panel 3 071 048 000 total panels. Obviously wind energy wouldn t be the only form of primary energy in the usa. With solar panels it would take a fairly small corner of nevada or texas or utah. This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1.

Solar power is more affordable accessible and prevalent in the united states than ever before. 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. Installed 10 6 gw of solar in 2018 alone. This number does look intimidating but with a large number of solar companies in u s.

If you wanted to power the entire u s. Solar energy accounts for 1 6 of total u s. Solar hydro geothermal and biofuels will also play roles with solar being at least equal to wind generation. It can be turned into reality.

Solar has ranked either first or second in capacity added to the u s. In 2018 utility scale solar power generated 66 6 terawatt hours twh 1 66 of total u s. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. To get these numbers we used high and low panel production ratios to calculate how many solar panels are needed on average.

You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire united states. Had 64 2 gw of installed solar enough to power 12 3 million american homes. Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today. The typical homeowner will need 28 34 solar panels to cover 100 of their energy usage dependent on location and roof size.

Assuming this power rating we would need to divide 2 75 tw by 350w which gives us the gigantic number of 7 85 billion 7 857 142 857 to be precise panels required.