How Many Solar Panels Are There In The Us

In order to find a range for number of solar panels we compared arizona and maine s solar panel production ratios 1 31 and 1 61 the highest and lowest in the u s.

How many solar panels are there in the us.

There are over 1 47 million solar panels in use across the contiguous 48 states according to satellite machine learning from researchers at stanford. Annual pv solar radiation in the united states source nrel the current standard size of panels used in a large sized solar plant is easily over 350w. After all we don t have dual suns that permit us to soak up solar energy 24 hours a day and there will be inevitable interruptions in power relay due to maintenance or any number of incidents. Assuming this power rating we would need to divide 2 75 tw by 350w which gives us the gigantic number of 7 85 billion 7 857 142 857 to be precise panels required.

It s great to know there s an increased chance of getting american made solar panels. First solar is the largest us based solar panel manufacturer with an annual production of 1 9gw of solar modules. Since the beginning of 2014 the average cost of solar photovoltaic pv panels has dropped nearly 50 2. Solar power in the united states includes utility scale solar power plants as well as local distributed generation mostly from rooftop photovoltaics.

This is enough capacity to power the equivalent of 12 million average american homes 1. We then took 11 000 kwh and divided it by the respective ratios and then divided that number by 250 the typical panel wattage. As of the end of 2019 the united states had over 71 3 gigawatts gw of installed photovoltaic capacity. Installations have grown 35 fold to an estimated 62 5 gigawatts gw today.

American solar power offsets over 70 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year which is like planting almost 1 2 billion trees.