Being the analytical type, the question popped into my head the other day: "How many square miles of solar cells would it take to provide the entire US population with electricity?"
I went to Affordable Solar's website and pick their BP Solar SX3200B model. It is 66.14 inches long x 32.95 inches wide. 2179 square inches and it produces 200Watts. That works out to be 10.9 square inches per watt.
Then I found this Department of Energy site providing statistics about how much power is generated from various sources. I decided to total up 2008's forcast pwer generation for fossil-fuel-generated power only: 5,989,811 THousand Megawatts, or 16,410 Thousand MegaWatts per day.
16.4 Trillion watts of electricity per day generated from fossil fuel sources. That's 178.6 trillion square inches of solar cells. 1.24 trillion square feet. THere is approximately 28 million square feet per mile. So if I have done the math right, we need 44.3 thousand square miles of solar cells.
I wonder what the environmental impact would be of 44.3 thousand square miles of formerly sunny earth suddenly being transformed into eternal shade?
