I happen to have inherited a Purple Heart. It was my grandmother’s brother, Anthony Scaccia, who died at the end of WW II. A fascinating read from the History News Network.

75 Years Later, Purple Hearts Made for an Invasion of Japan are Still Being Awarded

Was wondering how many solar panels it would take to power the US. Seems the US produces about 4,000 teraWatt-hours of electricity per year. That is 4 x 10e15. A modern solar panel will produce about 1800 Watt-hours per day or 657,000 Watt-hours per year. That’s 6.57 x 10e5. Dividing the production by production per panel gives the number of panels, or 1.6 x 10e10 panels. That 16 billion panels. Roughly 50 panels per person. This is for all electricity, including industrial uses. Sounds about right.

Panels are about 15 square feet each which gives 240 billion square feet. There are about 28 million square feet in a square mile, so we are looking at a bit over 8,000 square miles, an area about the size of New Jersey. Again, sounds about right. Thats about 5% of the US covered in solar panels. To be fair, the US is a big place with lots of open area. And nobody thinks 100% solar is a near term solution. But looking at the numbers, this isn’t far fetched.