Question

How many 1 gigawatt hydro or wind power ‘plants’ would be required to generate all of the electricity require in the US?

Answer 1

Electricity is measured in watts. Watts are very small units, so the terms

1. Kilowatt (1,000 watts),

2. Megawatt (1 million watts),

3. Gigawatt (1 billion watts) are most commonly used to describe the capacity of power plants.

The production and consumption of electricity are most commonly measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt-hour means 1,000 watts of electricity produced or consumed for one hour. A gigawatt power plant operates at full capacity produces 1000000 kilowatts of power. It means it produces 1000000 kW per hour, or 24,000000 kilowatt per day, or 8,760,000000 kilowatt per year.

Assumptions: A typical home uses about 11,000 kWh per year and there were 133,957,180 homes in United States (year 2014 ) according to Wikipedia.

1 X gigawatt of power will provide enough energy for = 8760000000 / 11000 homes

= 796363.63 homes

= 800000 homes (appx.)

Finally,

About 800000 homes in US require = 1 X 1Gigawatt power plant

So, 133957180 homes in US will require = 133957180 / 800000

= 167.446

= appx. 168 X 1 Gigwatt power plants