RE: 1 square mile for 25 megawatts.
I almost always used the handy formula 1 MW = 1,000 homes. So, one square mile of Solar can power 25,000 homes, or for an average of 4 people per home, a small city of 100,000 people.
For only 6 hours per day. Multiply by 5 for evernight delivery and storage conversion. And that is with NO margin for clouds. Snow. Rain.
1 square mile of solar => 100,000 people.
Good summary.
Just need to make people aware of how big a square mile of black panels is, and how much that costs to install/maintain.
Next calculation: backup.
You’ll need 240 Watt-hours of storage to evenly buffer the 1m^2 panel’s output (~5 usable hours of power in, 24 hours of power out, average 10 watts per hour).
That’s for just 1 day.
To account for excess cloud cover, you’ll need another 240Wh per day of backup planned. A miserably rainy/snowy week with negligible sunlight means you’ll need 1680 Wh of storage. Sure there may be enough light getting thru to lower that to 1400 Wh.
That’s full cost of a day times 7 days to cover those infrequent times clouds intervene for an extended period, there whether or not it’s used ... and a “brick wall effect” when you run out.
To bracket the upper end of cost, one 1m^2 panel plus 1400Wh storage, courtesy of GoalZero.com, is ~$2000.
Discounts are likely, but then so are other costs (land, maintenance, etc).
For 1 square meter, reliable to 1 week of bad weather.
Now multiply by 2,500,000.
That’s $5,000,000,000.
5 billion dollars to supply solar to 100,000 people ... and if that storm goes more than a week, it’s lights out.
That’s $14/day for 10 years per person.