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To determine how many solar panels you need, you'll need your annual kWh usage, which you can find by adding up your monthly kWh for January through December from your electricity bill. Alternatively, you can use the NREL PVWatts calculator, which offers a close estimate by looking at several advanced factors.

You'll also need the production ratio of your region or the amount of electricity produced by solar panels under common weather conditions near your address. Thankfully, there isn't much of a fluctuation throughout the United States and you can use the following maximum production ratios from clean energy provider EnergySage:

Northeast: 1.3
Pacific Northwest: 1.15
Southwest: 1.8
Mid-Atlantic: 1.35
Southeast: 1.5
Mountain West: 1.6
West Coast: 1.8
Midwest: 1.3

Finally, you'll need the solar panel's wattage. Divide the annual total wattage needed by the production ratio and then divide that by the wattage of your panels. For this example, let's go with the average of 400 watts per panel. Using an address in Las Vegas as an example, you'll divide 7,157 kWh by 1.8 by 400 W to get approximately 10 panels.

Installing solar panels over fish farms can help boost seafood harvests by 50%

The study looked at an aquaculture site near the mouth of the Yellow River in China's Shandong Province. In 2021, solar panels were installed several meters above the water to generate clean energy. The results have been astonishing.

The solar installation now generates 260 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity per year — enough to power 113,000 homes. At the same time, the shade from the panels keeps the water 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, which has led to 50% higher yields of shrimp and sea cucumbers.

To achieve this, ExoMars' Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) teamed up with another ESA spacecraft orbiting the red planet: Mars Express (MEX). The two craft maintain a radio link, so that as one passes behind the planet, radio waves cut through the deeper layers of the Martian atmosphere.

Changes in the atmosphere's refractivity—how it bends the radio waves—cause tiny but detectable shifts in the radio frequencies received by the spacecraft. By analyzing this shift, scientists can determine the density of the lower atmosphere and the electron density in the ionosphere—a charged upper layer of the atmosphere. The technique is called mutual radio occultation.

The treatment process makes the pallets immune to termites, rot, and decay. Before they are treated, the wood pallets are soaked in a water solution, which is made up of wood preservatives and other chemicals, which kills the bacteria and fungal spores on the wooden pallets.