if we scattered modern solar installations
across the US, with higher concentrations
in sunnier areas, we might be able to get
10 W/m^2 average performance for all of
them. How much land area would this
require to supply all US energy services?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
Critics claim that there simply isn’t enough land in the U.S. for solar to power the country. While it’s not an immediately practical question, it’s still fun to ponder. So, ignoring practical constraints like storage and grid technology, let’s explore whether we can fit enough solar to electrify the U.S.
One approach would be to start with data points like the size of solar panels, the wattage they produce, and the number of sunny hours per year. Unfortunately, this approach produces wildly different answers depending on assumptions. A better approach is to look at real-world data captured from real-world solar arrays and just extrapolate from there.
Starting with some conservative assumptions from a 2013 National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) report, we know that it takes, on average, 3.4 acres of solar panels to generate a gigawatt hour of electricity over a year. Given the U.S. 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