>>13404865>164W per square meter @ 100% efficiency, would translaIt's about 1kw per sq meter of direct sunlight.
Assuming fixed, non tracking solar panels in a good location you can get 5.75 kwh per sq meter on an average day.
We use about 4000 terawatt hours of electricity each year in the US.
4000 terawatt hours (yearly power use) / 5.75 kwh per sq m / 365.25 / 0.4 (solar panel efficiency) = 761836740 sq m or 1,838 sq miles.
That's about the three times the area as the city of Houston. For an additional comparison in the US we have 1,566,843 square miles of agricultural land.
To power our nation off solar we would need land 0.1% the size of land we use for farmland. And this is land that is virtually useless for anything else. You cant really grow crops in the areas where solar is best.
Now I know 40% efficient panels are somewhat optimistic for this, and you have packing density issues. So lets say your using 20% efficient panels and you have a packing density of 50% that still 0.4% the land area used for farmland.
Solar panels in bulk are around $0.30 per watt, inverters are around $0.20 per watt in bulk and mounting hardware is around $0.15 per watt (these are prices I could get for installing a 40kw array, IDK if national grid scale costs would be higher or lower).
That would be a material cost of 380 billion dollars raw cost for panels, inverters and mounts. Not including labor or transmission line upgrades or power storage. Pumped hydro seems to me to be the second best storage but the best storage is (almost) no storage. Under sea high voltage power transmission is a thing these days. Serval countries are already doing it. Not even with super conductors either. Run a line to Australia, run a line to Africa and you have solar power all day long no storage needed. I think 5 trillion would be adequate to do this if we were smart about it.
