Only 100 square miles of solar panels are required to power the entire United States

Thats what the batteries are for.

Per my calculations, the numbers add up in term of annual energy production. Obviously having to store the energy during the day and distributing the grid nationwide to normalize for cloud cover while also eliminating energy distribution losses is a must.

Yeah, distribution pretty much makes it impossible to just have it all in one spot.

It might have to be arranged in rings around towns and cities or big areas adjacent to.

I'm OK with such a massive project as long as it actually works.

Last Edited by TexasPaleo on 04/06/2019 10:41 PM

*Solar bump*

It's much better if not all is at one spot anyway, for security reasons. Rather than have one big 30000 square miles area full of panels, having 3000x 10 square miles areas makes you immune to any enemy trying to take down your power grid.
Also, if an enemy were to take down one of your 3000 panel arrays, you wouldn't face any disastrous consequences as would be the case with a nuclear power plant.

This allows you to place the solar panels close to the consumers and if done properly, you could do it without the need for expensive inverters which also waste some of the energy due to efficiency not being 100%.

You would manufacture TVs, fridges, coffee machines, washing machines etc which can be directly attached to a 48 volts DC coming from solar panels.
This would also make it much safer, because 48 volts cannot kill a human unless his skin is really really wet and even then, chances are slim.


The reason why this has to be done large scale and not just having everyone install his own system, is not only because it can be done way more efficiently this way, allowing to bypass the need of most inverters and more important, allows the utilization of large scale battery-less energy storage facilities which require 24/7 oversight.


Turning excess output from the solar panels into hydrogen, if wikipedia is accurate, should be an option by now, as the efficiency gets close to 90%. Together with efficiencies of over 40% one can reach with solar if one concentrates the sun light onto some high efficiency solar cells, we might end up with more energy and fuel than we would be able to consume. Clean energy and fuel.

Whenever storage of hydrogen would pose a problem, turning that hydrogen into ammonia which itself can be used as fuel might also be an option, or alternatively into some hydrocarbon based fuel.


This is a project where you cannot think small. Why do only 10000 square miles and not triple that to 30000 square miles which would give you a lot of excess energy to produce hydrogen and ammonia.
It would also give you a lot of excess energy to recycle stuff without polluting the environment along with using excess energy to actively clean the environment, reversing our current course.

^ conventional alkaline electrolysis has an efficiency of about 70%,[35] however thyssenkrupp have recently developed an advanced alkaline water electrolyser with an efficiency of 82%.[36] Accounting for the use of the higher heat value (because inefficiency via heat can be redirected back into the system to create the steam required by the catalyst), average working efficiencies for PEM electrolysis are around 80%, or 82% using the most modern alkaline electrolysers.[37] PEM efficiency is expected to increase to approximately 86%[38] before 2030. Theoretical efficiency for PEM electrolysers are predicted up to 94%.[39]

[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]

^ a detailed scientific paper on using ammonia as a fuel in various ways

[link to www.intechopen.com (secure)]

Some solar panel system setups have a single inverter (often called a “string” inverter) for the entire system. Some have a microinverter attached behind each panel. The most important thing to know about inverters is that they convert DC electricity, produced by the [link to solarhub.energy (secure)] into alternating current (AC) electricity. That’s the good stuff that powers your home. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Last Edited by MizzErSpat on 06/13/2019 07:41 AM

100 miles?

Plenty of room underground in Area 51. Set them up and string a square mile of metal arc lights over them. Plant some hemp for CBD oil between the panels. Call it done. If it gets nuked then just rebuild a mile further below.