5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh.
Square kilometers of solar panels.
I you are going to install all the panels in one line you would need a space of approximately 1 m x 5 56 m each panel having a size of 1 m x 0 556 m on your rooftop.
All you need is a 100 by 100 mile patch in a deserted corner of arizona texas or utah or anywhere to more than power the entire usa.
So very roughly if all us cars and trucks converted to electric vehicles it would take 5 3 square miles x 106 terawatt hours or 562 square miles of solar panels to power them all.
In a 6 kilowatt solar installation made up of 20 solar panels the panels alone will weigh approximately 800 pounds 20 panels x 40 lbs.
How much energy does a solar panel produce.
This is roughly equal to the area of spain.
Electricity demand in 2050 with solar energy would require roughly 33 000 square kilometers sq km of land.
Solar power is a gigawatt per square km.
Total area 1 0 18 5 56 m 2.
Based on our calculation above we know that this same system measures at 352 square feet which works out to a weight of 2 3 pounds per square foot 800 pounds 352 sq ft.
Dividing the global yearly demand by 400 kw h per square meter 198 721 800 000 000 400 and we arrive at 496 804 500 000 square meters or 496 805 square kilometers 191 817 square miles as the area required to power the world with solar panels.
Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would.
To produce the maximum amount of power per square foot a solar panel has to be well designed to handle temperature spectrum angle and amount of light.
Installing a solar panel system costs an average of 23 597 and dropping most homeowners pay between 16 532 and 30 820 expect to pay 2 50 to 3 50 per watt with most systems in the 3kw to 10kw range until the end of 2020 you can deduct 26 of the installation costs with the federal investment tax credit itc.
We could cover 10 000 square miles of desert in solar panels but an entirely centralized national power supply leaves the country vulnerable to continental outages.
That s if we spread solar panels evenly across the entire country.
Some people associate solar power with heat because heat is associated with lots of sunlight but if there s too much heat your solar panels may not work as effectively.
Since it takes 21 250 square miles of solar for 4 petawatt hours or 4 000 terawatt hours each terawatt hour takes about 5 3 square miles per terawatt hour.
For the sake of example if you are getting 5 hours of direct sunlight per day in a sunny state like california you can calculate your solar panel output this way.