Solar Power Farm In Calhoun County; How Many Acres
A solar power company wants to install hundreds of thousands of solar panels in Calhoun County Michigan.
Mlive is reporting that Ranger Power's River Fork Solar wants to invest approximately $150 million to install hundreds of thousands of solar panels. These solar panels would be installed on between 750 and 1,000 acres of land between 26 and 29 Mile Road. They state that these solar panels would create 149 megawatts, enough they say to power close to 24,000 homes.
Sounds like a great idea right. Let us run some numbers and you decide if it is worth it.
Well there are approximately 128 million homes in the United States. That means if we were to rely on solar panel alone, I know no one is talking about that, we would need between 4 and 5.3 million acres totaling a cost of $6,250 a home.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the average cost of a home’s electric bill in 2017 was approximately $112.00 per month. In Michigan the average monthly electric bill was $97.00.
If we were to base a transition to solar power totally on cost it would take approximately 56 months or 4 years and 8 months to recoup the cost to transition totally to solar. That calculation does not take into effect what the electric companies would charge us monthly for maintenance of the power plants, lines and meters.
I thought this would be a fun thought experiment and something for us all to consider.
More From WBCKFM
