08-16-2012, 10:45 AM
(08-15-2012, 08:57 PM)kandrathe Wrote: A good rule is you can get the equivalent of about 42% of maximum output per 12 hours of sunlight - less on cloudy days. So a one square meter solar panel should provide 0.42 x 12 hours x 150 watts = 756 Watt-hours per day.
The US consumed 396155900000000 Watt-hours in 2009. So, 396155900000000 Watt-hours / 365 days) / 756 (assuming 12 hours of sun every day) works out to 1435659564 square meters, or ~554.3 square miles. That works out to a square area about 23.5 miles across.
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The approximate cost per square meter is £250 or about $390. That works out to a project cost just for the panels of 1435659564 * $392 = ~ $562 billion.
So, lets for simplicity we need about $750 billion every 20 years to build and maintain the infrastructure to provide power for about 312 million people. That's $750 billion / 20 years = $37.5 billion per year, and for 312 million people is about $120 per person per year.
Not sure about the rest of the numbers, but I'm pretty sure you're low by 10x, because the US consumes approximately 4 petawatt-hours in a year, not 0.4.
-Jester