How many solar panels to power the us

Now, in , just six years later, solar panels on average have efficiency numbers between 15 to 18 percent. In fact, many solar panels are now available at 20 percent efficiency for commercial or utility solar sites. This alone will reduce the number of solar panels needed and the required land mass to host those solar panels. Homeowners installing their own solar panels on rooftops could make up to about 34 percent of this electricity need. With these things in mind, we can adjust our estimate from 22, square miles to just about 10, square miles.

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Why Solar. The U. One needs much more efficiency or much more power density. I was told half the power generated at a dam is lost in transmission km , and as you say, even more, is lost on its way to being used. Does anyone know how much Natural Gas power not used in utility electricity will need to be replaced by to reduce emissions? How much oil-based power? Why look to replacing current utility fossil fuel power demand as Victory? It may be only half the way to clean air. Lance, I agree: the grid is only half the problem.

The electric grid is getting all the attention, and PV is hot right now and likely going to keep expanding until it takes over the electricity sector, so Im not really worried about that.

But from what i can see, there is not as much happening on the natural gas side. Most homes are heated with gas, have gas stoves, and gas water heaters.

These can be replaced on an individual basis with rooftop solar thermal collectors, whether hot air or hot water, but this sector of the solar business is not achieving anywhere near the market share that PV is.

This electrify-everything approach would drastically increase the demand on the electric grid, doubling the amount of PV needed. Worse, heating demands occur at night, making grid-scale battery storage even more challenging. Rooftop thermal collectors seem like the right answer. And then, theres the cars…. As electric cars become more common the need for more electric power needs to grow. Also, rather than put all that generation in one spot it would be better to spreed it around the entire country.

It reduces the possibility of a massive failure and lowers the transmission losses which are very significant today and would only become worst with a single centralized approach. What if we were to provided solar panels to every home and building in the U. Does it anyone knows of a study like that? Efficiency, wind and solar — three technology groups. I have done extensive examination of wind output, using actual generation data per hour for the entire year of from MISO.

Total U. Geothermal, biomass and hydropower. Personally, I favor using that excess wind and solar, when we have enough solar to have excess to produce hydrogen, which can be stored in existing natural gas storage facilities and used in existing natural gas combined cycle plants.

I think that is the storage technology that beats all others, unless it turns out to be cheap enough to convert the electricity to renewable methane. With abundant wind and solar under 2 cents per KWh, this is a completely different conversation than the one we might have had five years ago, and a lot of people are still using data from ten or fifteen years ago. Wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels. When you live in a world of abundance, things look very different than they do in a world of shortage and control.

I just watched a video on perovskite solar a couple days ago channel: Just Have a Think. It sounds like it is possible to make a 3 junction cell to optimize the capture of low, medium, and high frequency light. The materials and energy required to make perovskite solar should be cheaper than silicon-based panels. Besides reducing required area and potentially cost as well, higher efficiency opens up more possibilities….

Especially when combined with to mile range batteries. Deficit of 25 to 30 miles per day…less driving on weekends… instead of needing to plug-in every 4 days at least , maybe plug-in every 10 to 12 days. This is derived from the fact that every year the U. This means an astounding consumption of 12, kWh per year per capita. If each one of the 7. These are reasons enough to wonder how the entire U.

If we were to think of the solar panels needed to power the entire world , a significantly large portion of that would be needed for the U. Currently, the existing infrastructure in the nation churns out over billion kWh every year. That means a daily average of almost 11 billion kWh. Now, unlike conventional power generation sources, solar cannot operate 24 hours a day. This is why the hourly consumption and hourly generation numbers for solar power cannot be the same.

For example, if one needs 24 kWh per day, his hourly average consumption would be 1 kW, but a 1 kW solar plant would not generate energy for 24 hours. This is due to the day-night cycles. Owing to this, the number of hours of peak sunshine at any location matters. In our case, the full sunshine hours in the U. For our calculation, we will assume a national average or 4.

This can, of course, be different based on the latitudes where the majority of the solar plants are located. The current standard size of panels used in a large sized solar plant is easily over W. Assuming this power rating, we would need to divide 2.

This number does look intimidating, but with a large number of solar companies in U. It is nearly impossible to install all these panels at a single location for more than one reason. We can, however, hope for a cumulative installed capacity crossing the required number with plants spread throughout various states. A megawatt of solar power plant requires about 5 acres of land.

An important point to note here is that not all the panels have to be installed on vast areas of land.