Amount Of Solar Panels Needed To Power The Us

There s 1 8 billion acres of land in the usa so about 0 6 of our land is all it would take.

Amount of solar panels needed to power the us.

According to ancient research egyptians were the first civilization to use solar energy to power their homes. An average homeowner needs 28 to 34 solar panels to fully offset their electricity bill with solar. The sun is also used to provide solar energy to many homes. Compare solar quotes on the energysage marketplace customized to your property and energy needs.

This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. Map courtesy of google maps. 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. In case of large systems as a rule of thumb a typical solar system of 1mw capacity requires an area of 5 acres or over 200 000 square feet.

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. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today.

It is still unclear how ancient people could store the sun s energy and power their homes at night. The number of panels you need for your house depends on factors like location and panel performance. You can use the table of solar power production per kw for each state above to do the same math for your state. 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 means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. The yellow square is approximately 21 000 square miles. Solar power is more affordable accessible and prevalent in the united states than ever before. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.

Follow along to calculate the amount of solar panels your specific home will need. 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. 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. Solar would have to produce about 4 million gwh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire usa.