There have been many myths demonising solar power over the years – most have been dispelled with countless research papers released all over the world. One myth says that solar power requires too much land to be a viable source of power in the future. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released research showing figures obtained from actual solar power plants in existence or under construction.

The report titled, “Land-Use Requirements for Solar Power Plants in the United States” was written by NREL’s lead author, Sean Ong as well as Clinton Campbell, Robert Margolis, Paul Denholm and Garvin Heath. The report takes information and statistics from 72% of the United States solar power plants that are either fully working or under construction.

They found that a solar PV plant that generates 1GW hour per year will need around 2.8 acres of land. This means that a plant big enough to produce power for 1000 homes will need around 32 acres or 0.12km². Concentrating solar power plants require on average 2.7 acres for solar collectors and other equipment per annual gigawatt-hour; 3.5 acres for all land enclosed within the project boundary.

The researchers are happy with their results and believe that the real figures are not that far different from the estimates used in the past. The report was not complied to prove anything or disprove anything; it was more to provide a real analysis of land use so people can have actual figures to compare with the land use of other energy sources.

“The numbers aren’t good news or bad news,” Denholm said. “It’s just that there was not an understanding of actual land-use requirements before this work. However, we were happy to find out that many of the solar land use ranges and estimates used in the literature are very close to actual solar land use requirements that we found.”

Previously, the NREL had said that if solar power actually powered the whole of the United States, it would only need around 0.6% of total land available. That is nothing at all – especially when you consider the carbon emissions that would be saved, not to mention the land that would be saved from harsher forms of power production such as coal mining.