How many solar panels could you buy for $2B? What would be the power output?

Question

I just read that McCain wants to spend $2 Billion a year researching ways to make coal clean. That begs the question, why not just spend $2 Billion a year on solar panels?

Anybody know how much power output you could buy for that much?

I'm sure if he drew up a 5 year, $10 Billion contract, the government could get a massive discount, probably as much as 30% off the cost.

So, waddaya say Yahoo Answers? How many solar panels could you buy for $2 Billion, and how much power would that produce?

I'm guessing a whole lot.

Answer 1

during the day and when no clouds are out probably a lot!

Answer 2

Well the largest solar power plant in the US creates 30 million kWh annually.  That cost 100 million to create so if we had a system that cost 10 billion then we could create a 30 billion kWh (or 30,000 Giga Watt hours) solar power plant.

If we wanted to take another route of giving people financial breaks on home solar systems the US government could pay for 400,000 home solar arrays that created 3,000 watts-dc.  

Obviously the US government wouldn't pay for the entire cost of home solar arrays but I just wanted to give a number.