Your numbers and PV replacement calc are way off.Oilpan4 said:According to the IEA the US generated 1.2 Terra watt hours in 2017 with coal.
That would require about 240 Terra watts of installed PV capacity and a battery to store some of it.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? In 2017, about 4,034 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or 4.03 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale facilities in the United States. About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases).
Second, a well sited, single axis tracked utility PV array is good for about 2.5 kWh annual generation per STC watt.
Well sited on-shore wind produces about 3- 3.5 kWh annually per rated watt
Off-shore wind, about 4 - 5 kWh annually per rated watt
Units:
10^6 Mega = million
10^9 Giga = billion
10^12 Tera = trillion
10^15 Peta = quadrillion
Starting from 4.03 * 10^12 kWh annual US electricity generation,
63% is from fossils, = 2.54 * 10^12 kWh annually
Which rather conveniently then requires 10^12 watts = 1 TW of PV
If we predict equal shares of PV, on-shore and off-shore wind the average yield will be 3.4 kwh annually per watt installed,
And thus 2.54/3.4 TW = 0.75 TW = 750 GW required to replace the fossils currently used in electricity production.
In 2018 the US installed ~ 18 GW of PV/wind
In 2018 China installed 50 - 60 GW of PV/wind
Only politics stands in the way of increasing production way above 2018. I'm sure your teachers would agree.