Amount Of Solar Panels Needed To Power The Us

An average homeowner needs 28 to 34 solar panels to fully offset their electricity bill with solar.

Amount of solar panels needed to power the us.

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. 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. The number of panels you need for your house depends on factors like location and panel performance. Solar would have to produce about 4 million gwh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire usa.

This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. Solar power is more affordable accessible and prevalent in the united states than ever before. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.

Compare solar quotes on the energysage marketplace customized to your property and energy needs. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. Map courtesy of google maps. 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.

The sun is also used to provide solar energy to many homes. Just 11 200 000 acres to generate 4 000 000. 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.

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

Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today. You can use the table of solar power production per kw for each state above to do the same math for your state. 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. Since the beginning of 2014 the average cost of solar photovoltaic pv panels has dropped nearly 50 2.