Hillary Clinton said today in Johnstown, PA, here:
"We're going to install half a billion solar panels and generate enough clean energy to power every home in America within 10 years."
Oh where oh where to begin?
Your average residential customer used 911 kWh/month in 2014.
Where I live where the sun gives me about 4 to 4.5 sun hours per day, this means I'd need a 9kw system.
A complete do-it-yourself system (!) of that size will cost me $17,600! (And let's not even mention all the things that will not do for me that the current grid does).
But guess what? It's composed of 36 PANELS!
500 million panels divided by 36 yields just south of 14 million homes equipped like mine.
But in 2014 there were almost 134 million households, so 120 million of you are OUT OF LUCK!
Meanwhile the cost for the lucky 13.8 million is about $243 billion, which I'm sure Hillary will make Donald Trump pay for.
Solar power still accounts for just 1.07% of total US electricity in 2016 despite Barack Obama's many promises to expand it, about 43.2 TWh using the most generous assumptions.
Residential customers alone consumed 1,407.2 TWh of electricity in 2014, about 34% of total 2014 consumption.
To come close to doing with solar what Hillary Clinton promised today would cost well in excess of $2 trillion.
Not. Gonna. Happen. Ever.
