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Originally Posted by daniel200;
Today it takes about 2.8 acres to produce 1 gigawatt hour of electricity. The US is expected to use 4 million gigawatt of electricity hours in 2022.
4,000,000 GWh * 2.8 acres/GWh = 11.2 million acres
or 17,500 square miles to provide all US electricity requirements
Texas is 268,000 square miles or 15 times greater than the space required!
There is about 120 million homes in the USA. If you assumed 2,000 square feet per home of roof space for solar .... that equals:
120,000,000 x 2,000 = 240 million square feet
Or 8,600 square miles.
So rooftop solar could provide 50% of the countries electricity
Of course solar only needs to supplement hydro, wind, geothermal, nuclear etc.
The efficiency of solar panels has been steadily increasing .... So the it will take even less area in the future
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daniel200;2110181
There are many items that require further definition to try to fit these "facts" into a rigorous analysis.: I have taken a quick look at what is published. Most are non scientific. None are rigorous analyses. Here are some comments:
1. "
Today it takes about 2.8 acres to produce 1 gigawatt hour of electricity."
The correct term is 1 gigawatt hour per year since it is a power variable not energy.
2. There is no definition of how many solar hours are included? 8760 per year the sun always shines or 50% or ??? Definition required
3. The 2.8 acres is the area of the solar panels themselves. You need more like 4 acres to get the plant footprint. Note: there will be additional plot required for the batteries required to survive the nights and poor solar times.
4. If you try to put solar panels on every roof area you will decrease the power potential since areas facing N do not produce as well as those facing S. It will take more area and more solar panels.
5. "
The efficiency of solar panels has been steadily increasing " That is true for new solar panels. However, once the panels are installed, they start to lose efficiency. Hopefully you break even
6. I am out of energy to try to delve into this further. I used to do this for a living, but now I am RETIRED! Good night!