Let's figure out just how much area we need for solar panels.
The US consumes about 19.05M barrels of oil per day. Each barrel of oil is about 1.6 MWh of power.
So this is 31017210 MWh (3.1 x 10^10 kWh) of power just in oil every day..
The solar constant is 1.36kW/m^2 on average.
Solar panels convert solar energy into power with roughly a 14% efficiency or about 190W/m^2
or about 2.2kWh/m^2 in 12hrs.
Taking 3.1 x 10^10 kWh/(2.2kWh/m^2) I get 13 x 10^9 m^2. Converting this to miles gives us about 5240sq miles of solar panels just to get the same amount of energy we consume in oil.
The US consumes about 19.05M barrels of oil per day. Each barrel of oil is about 1.6 MWh of power.
So this is 31017210 MWh (3.1 x 10^10 kWh) of power just in oil every day..
The solar constant is 1.36kW/m^2 on average. Solar panels convert solar energy into power with roughly a 14% efficiency or about 190W/m^2 or about 2.2kWh/m^2 in 12hrs.
Taking 3.1 x 10^10 kWh/(2.2kWh/m^2) I get 13 x 10^9 m^2. Converting this to miles gives us about 5240sq miles of solar panels just to get the same amount of energy we consume in oil.
Hopefully I did everything right above.