Verified answer

The answer is Yes, solar energy can supply enough electricity for a resort with a hotel. The problem right now is that Solar energy costs more than using the grid to purchase power. This is because the payback will vary from between 10-20 years. This varies depending on the cost of energy from the local electricity provider. Another issue is that the resort would need to have enough real estate to use as a platform for the panels. To be truly energy independent, using solar as you suggest, you would need to invest a very large amount of money on the Solar panels and infrastructure to support it. The investors of this resort would have much less of a return in the short term even though in the long run, the benefits of the reduced electrical costs would eventually break even and then pay for itself. Investors are notoriously shy about betting on something for more than 10 years. Bottom line is it is possible if you have people with vision.

The second question is I don't know. You would need to give some insight to the type of resort. Such as How many rooms, Square footage, Pools, interior cubic ft. etc.

You may want to ask a more specific question to Yahoo answers asking "Does anyone know how much electricity, measured in Kilowatt hours, that the MGM Grand in Vegas uses?

That way you would be able to have a rough estimate of how much a large resort uses.

Good Luck.

Possibly, a difficult and expensive project. If you supply the numbers i can make an attempt at a calculation.

The big problem: even if you put up enough panels to supply electricity for the hotel, you need to generate about 5 times that power so you can store the power for times when the sun does not shine. That amount of storage will require thousands of large expensive batteries.

But here is what you need to do this calculation:

power need in kWs, both peak and average.

How long do you need to store power for when the sun does not shine.

Square ft of roof area that is facing south. There cannot be any shadow from trees in this area

How many hours of sunshine do you typically get? worse case in middle of winter?

Another consideration is selling extra power to the power company so you can buy it back when the sun is not out. This eliminates the batteries. But you need an OK from the utility company, as some do not allow this.

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The obvious answer is yes, but the realistic answer is the question... How much solar will be required, how much land do you have for the solar field and how much money do you have.

We can have no way of knowing this. Is the resort in the desert, or the mountains. How many rooms and what kind of entertainment.

I think the setup cost may be more than the cost of electricity for the next 10 years upfront. Solar panels have a large foot print for the amount of energy. Solar hot water (and heat) may be more efficient than electric hot water (and other heat sources).

For which resort with a hotel? If it's the Bamboo Hilton somewhere on the Indian subcontinent and the air conditioning is supplied by children waving fans, you might not need any power at all. However, consider that most homes in the US use perhaps 5 kW, and a 5 kW solar panel is very large.

For any sort of a modern resort, the answer is no.

Not very much at all, in fact the government has been harnessing the use of geothermal energy for decades now, You can't really measure solar energy as you would typically think to do it with like, say your energy bill, which uses other forms of energy. If you have solar panels on your home, the electric company can't charge you for the use of them...it is free energy. If you have a windmill, sometimes the electric company will offer to buy out your excess energy to sell to others.

A hotel requires heavy wiring which chews so much power. Talk about solar panel it depends on how many there is. One is not gonna do it for a hotel.

Homemade Solar Power Videos - http://solarpower.siopu.com/?Oup

I don't think so because you need allot of solar panels to produce electricity since they aren't very efficient. however some of the newer solar panels are becoming more and more efficient,

you'll need solar panels all over the roof to supply a resort (and it won't even supply the whole thing)

Yes it can EXCEPT not at night unless excess daytime energy can be stored for nighttime use. Multi-megawatt solar arrays are already in operation