PV Gap

Leonard Said:

How many square miles of solar panels are necessary to power the entire country?

We Answered:

Assuming you only mean electricity, and that you mean America: the US consumes about 3.8 trillion kWh/year.

In California, 1kWp of panels will generate about 2200kWh/year.


So you would need 1.7TW of solar panels. A 150W solar panel you can buy today is about 1.5x0.8m.

So you would need about 14 billion square metres of solar panels, which is about 5,300 square miles or 0.14% of US land area.