{"id":197,"date":"2016-01-08T09:42:31","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T14:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/solarenergylocal.com\/news\/?p=197"},"modified":"2017-04-05T21:49:55","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T01:49:55","slug":"could-the-entire-u-s-be-powered-by-solar-from-just-one-corner-of-nv-or-ut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/could-the-entire-u-s-be-powered-by-solar-from-just-one-corner-of-nv-or-ut\/","title":{"rendered":"Could the entire U.S. be powered by solar from just one corner of NV or UT?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Elon Musk thinks solar power is underrated<\/h2>\n<p>Business magnate Elon Musk is known for his roles in various aspects of technology and business &#8212; from PayPal to SpaceX &#8212; and he is also a strong supporter of solar power and solar energy.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, not only is Musk a big supporter of solar energy iniatives, but he thinks that the power of solar energy is drastically underrated at this point in time.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Musk: &quot;You could take a corner of Utah and Nevada and power the entire United States with solar power.&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AGU15?src=hash\">#AGU15<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Lauren Morello (@lmorello_dc) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lmorello_dc\/status\/676840280302202880\">December 15, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>How little space is needed for how much power?<\/h2>\n<p>Musk <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2015\/12\/05\/full-text-of-elon-musks-paris-cop21-speech\/\" title=\"spoke at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21)\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>spoke at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21)<\/strong><\/a> back in December and <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The important thing to appreciate is if let&#8217;s say the only thing we had was solar energy, that that was the only power source, if you just took a small section of Spain, you could power all of Europe. It&#8217;s a very small amount of area that&#8217;s actually needed to generate the electricity we need to power civilization or in the case of the U.S., a little corner of Nevada or Utah, power the entire United States.&#8221;<br \/>&#8211;Elon Musk <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2015\/12\/05\/full-text-of-elon-musks-paris-cop21-speech\/\" title=\"speaking at COP21\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>speaking at COP21<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Utah and Nevada<\/h2>\n<p>Musk specifically pointed to Utah and Nevada &#8212; or, more specifically, small subsections of each state &#8212; as potential sources for a large amount of solar power generation in the United States. Both of those states <a href=\"http:\/\/energy.gov\/maps\/solar-energy-potential\" title=\"rank very high in solar energy potential\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>rank very high in solar energy potential<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s especially interesting that he mentioned Nevada, as that state is currently in the midst of a battle between utility companies, solar companies, and residential solar customers about the future of <a href=\"http:\/\/solarenergylocal.com\/news\/net-metering-changes-makes-future-of-solar-in-nevada-unclear\/\" title=\"net metering in the state\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>net metering in the state<\/strong><\/a>, and now some question the future of solar power in the Nevada if those changes hold.<\/p>\n<div id=\"inlink\"><a href=\"http:\/\/solarenergylocal.com\/news\/net-metering-changes-makes-future-of-solar-in-nevada-unclear\/\" title=\"Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Tech_Forum_29_14231682575-150x150.jpg\" title=\"Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear\" alt=\"Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear\"><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/solarenergylocal.com\/news\/net-metering-changes-makes-future-of-solar-in-nevada-unclear\/\" title=\"Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear\"><h4>Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear<\/h4><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/solarenergylocal.com\/news\/net-metering-changes-makes-future-of-solar-in-nevada-unclear\/\" title=\"Net metering changes makes future of solar in Nevada unclear\" class=\"hide375\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n<span class=\"source-attribution\">Source &rarr; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techinsider.io\/elon-musk-solar-panels-to-power-the-earth-2015-12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Tech Insider<\/a><\/span><div class=\"pd-photo-att\">Photo Credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Capitol_PV_Installation_031.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Photo<\/a> by Ballonboy101 \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business magnate Elon Musk is known for his roles in various aspects of technology and business &#8212; from PayPal to SpaceX &#8212; and he is also a strong supporter of solar power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[41,45,3,6,49],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solar","tag-electricity","tag-nevada","tag-solar-energy","tag-solar-power","tag-utah"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarenergylocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}