How much would it cost and how much land would be needed to get all the Electricity in the United States from Solar Energy?
Im just curious if this is still possible. How much total power is used on average by the United States? How much would it cost to this many solar panels or other systems to produce electricity from the sun? Im trying to find an estimate of how much it would cost for all electricity used by us for solar energy.
38In 15Watt x = 494sqIn 13In this scale by a factor 1 million watts = 15Mega sqin 494 000 000 494 000 000 psi = 78.75 acres Sofar Watts 15Mega 1,000,000 78.75 acres panels needs can scale up this equality SqMiles (640 acres = 1 sqMile) Note the area does not consider more space between the panels. You'll need more space if you can you walk among them so as to be able to serve 15 etc. * (640/78.75) = 121.9 MW / SqMile 1000000 * (640/78.75) = 8126985 * 100each $ = $ 812,698,400 this day is $ 812 billion and you have enough power to replace a nuclear power plant. You will need more land than 1 sq mil, you need the items difficult to mount the panels. So you can easily quadruple the cost and space requirements of 3.248 trillion dollars (not including the purchase ground), 4 square miles with 32,507,940 (32.5 million) of solar panels why quadruple the price? Remember that the panels are exposed to half day worth of light if you need at least twice the capacity to store half of what you produce in batteries for night use. And that is generous in assuming you get a yield of 100% and no cloudy. The additional cost of batteries, cables, etc. are solar trackers only partially covered by this estimate. Then you have the maintenance costs to maintain the panels operating at full capacity and to replace the damage. (Imagine what would be a hail storm do) And all this to replace a single 120-watt power mega.
solar shingle
