What do you get sick of explaining to people?

Wow, so much wrong.

First, the link I gave had a link in it (Which frankly I didn't think would be worth pointing out to you, since you're obviously numbers-averse) to http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change . And it, in turn, links to others.

Next: Assuming your numbers are right (Citations?), let's look at the numbers. Since 1 square foot is 1/10.76 of a square meter, it will receive 0.130 kW/h. Oh, but that's just the energy at the equator. You don't happen to live in the north of Brazil, do you? Because for the civilized world it's much less. Also, in most of the USA, for instance, they tend to only receive between 6 and 7 hours of useful solar radiation per day. (http://www.oksolar.com/images/daily_solar_radiation4.gif) Oh, and PV panels aren't very efficient, you'll be lucky to get about 20% efficiency out of them when they're brand new and sparkling clean. Oh, but they don't stay clean, do they? Nope, they get dusty. So you either make do with dusty panels, or waste energy cleaning them. Speaking of wasting energy, unless you want really poor results you're going to need to re-aim those suckers. Oops, but you do see the occasional cloud, rain, snow, dust, right? More efficiency loss.

So, by and by you're down to about 0.01kW/h for your mythical square foot of PV panel, and assuming 7 hours of sunlight/day for you (I'm being kind), then you should be able to charge up your trusty cell phone in ONLY 70 days! Yay.

I don't think you understand that most Americans live in California ... (Citation?) Bullshit. At most about 12% of the US population lives in California. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California )

If that's true then why do people buy them? Why are companies developing huge Solar farms in the desert? Because there's a sucker who won't do his own calculations (Like you, for instance) born every minute. And those suckers will pay money to con artists for these pie-in-the-sky schemes, and those folks are only too happy to take it. Remember Solyndra? ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/solyndra-politics-infused-obama-energy-programs/2011/12/14/gIQA4HllHP_story.html )

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent