How Many Solar Panels To Power Usa

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How many solar panels to power usa. Obviously wind energy wouldn t be the only form of primary energy in the usa. It is also reported that total electricity consumption for the united states during 2012 was 3 694 650 million kwh million kilowatt hours. About 7 86 billion solar panels would be needed to power the u s. This means an astounding consumption of 12 000 kwh per year per capita.

Solar hydro geothermal and biofuels will also play roles with solar being at least equal to wind generation. Consumes around 4000 billion kwh of electricity. This is derived from the fact that every year the u. There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford.

American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees. 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. Requires about 4 petawatts of electricityover one year to run life as normal. 767 762 000 000 watts 250 watts per panel 3 071 048 000 total panels.

In this report nrel states that about 3 4 acres of solar panels are required to generate one gigawatt hour of electricity over the course of one year.