How Many Solar Panels To Power The Us

There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford.

How many solar panels to power the us.

This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. How much are 21 250 square miles. Pv panels on just 0 6 of the nation s total land area could supply enough electricity to power the entire united states. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles.

4 pv can also be installed on rooftops with essentially no land use impacts. Map courtesy of google maps. The typical homeowner will need 28 34 solar panels to cover 100 of their energy usage dependent on location and roof size. Written by qualified solar engineer aniket on august 17 2019 about 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s.

To get these numbers we used high and low panel production ratios to calculate how many solar panels are needed on average. American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees. California is expected to require solar panels on most new houses starting in 2020. Homeowners point to a variety of reasons for considering solar panels.

Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity. However it is an interesting thought to consider the total approximate cost of these panels compared with what the united states government spends every year on everything else if one approximates each panel to cost 250 the total cost would be 767 billion. 3 billion of them. How many solar panels do i need to power my house.

Solar s abundance and potential throughout the united states is staggering. That is a lot of solar panels. 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. After all we don t have dual suns that permit us to soak up solar energy 24 hours a day and there will be inevitable interruptions in power relay due to maintenance or any number of incidents.