Did you even bother reading the NREL website that I referenced? Those "people" (who are experts in the field), along with Elon Musk (who assumed panels with 20% efficiency), have run the numbers and their numbers are between 15000 and 10000 square miles. You are only off by a factor of 30 !!
From Elon Musk:
“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah,” he explained. “You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States…. The batteries you [would] need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”
That’s just 101 square miles, or as Elon says, “a little square on the U.S. map.” To put this into perspective, that’s about 10% of the 1045 square-mile area of Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. state—although admittedly the desert Southwest has better insolation than New England.
Here is the basic calculation for a solar farm to power the US. As I already told you, it is an academic exercise because the probability of it ever being built is low. By the way, in case you forgot, you are the one who broached the subject.
Power Needed: 4T kWhs per year
Average Power per panel per day (assuming SW US): 1.5 kWhs
Panels needed: 7.3 B
Area per panel: 17 sq. ft.
Area needed just for the panels: 4,300 sq. mi.
Total area needed: Probably need to double or triple the 4,300 sq. mi. for access to the panels to get to approximately 10,000 sq. mi. for the farm (a square 100 miles on a side, not the combined area of TX, OK, and NM that you claimed).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blueblaze
You don't have to rely on "people". All the info you need to do the calculation yourself is available online, and it's basic arithmetic. Be sure to cut whatever number you come up with by 2/3rds to account for darkness and poor weather. But a little common sense immediately debunks your "15,000 square mile" number. Between solar and wind (an equally inefficient technology), we passed that number years ago. Take a drive through West Texas and East California sometime, if you don't believe it. And yet, solar plus wind accounts for less than 4% of total energy generation in North America.
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