What if all of North Carolina were a solar panel?

Solar panels have been a hot commodity as of late -- the technology is getting better and cheaper so people are finding more ways to incorporate them into daily life. For homes, people are installing them as a way to save money and also increase the value of their home. In North Carolina, there are incentives available to you if you use solar power in your home.

While there are numerous benefits to solar power that can be ad nauseum, a new study looked at some fun hypothetical questions based on the power of solar panels. The team at Greenshine New Energy asked: If the entire United States was a solar panel, what could it power and for how long? Additionally, they crunched the numbers on what each state could power and for how long. Let’s dive into the results.

First off, if we looked at the United States as a whole and if it was entirely a solar panel, it could have quite the energy producing power. According to Greenshine, one year of solar energy production could power 105 years of the entire earth. That’s a fantastic ration.

Now, looking at North Carolina specifically, what could we power? Well, first off, let’s look at how many individual solar panels North Carolina would take up. The study estimates roughly 85 billion solar panels would fit in the state. Those 85 billion panels would produce 90,364,253,784.06 kW in just one day of energy production. For some context, the average home in North Carolina uses 1077 kWh per month. Next, the Greenshine team looked at a comparable country that each state could power. For North Carolina, Belgium came in as the closest one. One day of solar energy production for solar panel North Carolina could power Belgium for an entire year and still have roughly 9 billion kWs left over.

Finally, the study had some cool comparisons for what certain states could power and for how long outside of foreign countries. North Carolina was not included, but the findings are still amusing. For example, Rhode Island, the smallest state, could charge 203,499,643,182 iPhones after one day of generating solar energy. Florida could power the Magic Kingdom at Disney World for 4,878 years, and Texas could power AT&T Stadium for 45,098,510 games -- that’s a whole lotta Cowboys. Perhaps the funniest insight of the whole study is that California would produce enough energy in one day to allow 227,150 time travels for the Back to the Future DeLorean. The math equations for that one have to be great.

Overall, hopefully solar will continue to grow and become a biggest share of the energy production in the United States. While we may not want an entire state to be solar panels, it is powerful to think of what so many panels could do. Solar energy is a source of energy that we should take advantage of and continue to promote. Maybe someday North Carolina will produce enough solar energy to power another country.