Solar Panel Acres Per Mw

So how much money can a solar farm make for property owners.

Solar panel acres per mw.

The first solar farm boom area was in the south west with devon cornwall being a haven for the solar investor and this soon spread right along the south coast. Thus a 1 mw solar power plant with crystalline panels about 18 efficiency will require about 4 acres while the same plant with thin film technology 12 efficiency will require about 6 acres. If you divide this one million watts by 200 watts per panel we are left with needing 5 000 solar panels to produce one mw of power. A general rule of thumb.

For direct land use requirements the capacity weighted average is 7 3 acre mwac with 40 of power plants within 6 and 8 acres mwac. A solar farm requires 4 7 acres of land per megawatt mw of capacity. But there are exceptions. Therefore we can say that for every acre the plant produces an average of 0 357 gwh or 357 mwh of energy per year.

One mw is equal to one million watts. Other published estimates of solar direct land use generally fall within these ranges. The simple thumb rule is high efficiency solar panels will require less area for the same mw capacity than lower efficiency panels. The cost of land for 1 mw plant will therefore translate to 2 500 per month on average.

For example the solar farm land requirements for a 1 megawatt solar plant is around 5 acres. Small single axis photovoltaic systems require an average 2 9 acres per 1 000 megawatt hours or 3 8 acres when considering all unused area that falls inside the project boundary. If you were to use panels that were a higher wattage such as 320 watts you would need significantly less panels to achieve the same one mw of power. On average 1 acre solar farm cost about 500 per month to lease in the united states.

Approximately 25 acres of land is required for every 5 megawatts mw of installation enough to power 1 515 homes1. On a capacity weighted basis total land requirements average out to 8 9 acres mwac and 7 3 acres mwac for direct land use. Put another way a pv plant spanning 32 acres could power 1 000 households.