Could We Power All Of Us With Solar Panels

After all we don t have dual suns that permit us to soak up solar energy 24 hours a day and there will be inevitable interruptions in power relay due to maintenance or any number of incidents.

Could we power all of us with solar panels.

Now if we cover an area of the earth 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels even with moderate efficiencies achievable easily today it will provide more than 17 4 tw power. For the over capacity system the authors found that virtually all the country s power needs could be met with wind solar and storage. The batteries you need to store the energy to make sure you have 24 7 power is 1 mile by 1 mile. You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire united states.

Pv panels on just 0 6 of the nation s total land area could supply enough electricity to power the entire united states. If you wanted to power the entire u s. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity.

You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to. This study considered only wind and solar. Solar s abundance and potential throughout the united states is staggering. 4 pv can also be installed on rooftops with essentially no land use impacts.

The seia report tallies all types of solar energy and in 2007 the united states installed 342 mw of solar photovoltaic pv electric power 139 thermal megawatts mw th of solar water heating 762 mw th of pool heating and 21 mw th of solar space heating and cooling. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita. Japan germany and the united states are major markets for solar cells. Concentrating solar thermal power csp is the other method for capturing energy from the sun and seven southwestern states have the technical potential and land area to site enough csp to supply more than four times.

With solar panels it would take a fairly small corner of nevada or texas or utah.