claim: if we got solar energy from "an area of the southwestern desert 100 miles on a side, that would be enough, in and of itself, to provide 100 percent of all the electricity needs for the united states of america in a full year."
author: al gore
evidence_1: apr 8, 2015 ... tl;dr: we'll probably never power the world entirely on solar, but if we did, it would take a rather small fraction of the world's land area: less than 1 percent of the earth's land area to provide for current electricity needs. first, let me be clear: i doubt the future is 100% solar or anything like it. we are in the midst ...
evidence_2: jul 27, 2007 ... if we assume a 1000 mwe electrical generation plant, and we assume it runs 24/7 for the entire year (no down time), then that plant will generate about ... assuming the average us solar resource of 1800 kw-hr/m2-year [how much the sun shines] and a pv system efficiency of 10%, one square meter of pv ...
evidence_3: dec 14, 2011 ... knies even went so far as to say that the desert received enough energy in a few hours to power the world for a year. while shuman was ... “we will build extra capacity beyond what morocco needs if someone wants us to,” he said, “but we will need a big share of the electricity produced by these projects.” ...
evidence_4: sunlight bathes us in far more energy than we could ever need—if we could just catch enough. by george ... behind them, a full moon is sinking over the gigawatt glare of las vegas. ... on a clear summer day with the sun directly overhead, nevada solar one can convert about 21 percent of the sun's rays into electricity.
evidence_5: oct 19, 2011 ... deserts are areas that receive very little precipitation. ... the black rock desert in the u.s. state of nevada, for instance, is all that remains of the prehistoric lake lahontan. the hard ... in countries like yemen, artificial wadis can carry enough water for whitewater rafting trips during certain times of the year.