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If you draw a 50x50km square on a map of France, you'll quickly realize that's an area the size of Luxembourg - not exactly negligible.

Pretty much. How much is used by vinyards? Or farms?

It's the yellow dots here

France has about 1 million km of roads [1], lets assume at least 2m wide. That's 2,000 sq km.

How many of these roads can you see on this picture

A 50×50 km square would be 2500 km². We're talking about 52 km², which is a 7.2 km × 7.2 km square. Shitty dimensional analysis strikes again!

> A 50×50 km square would be 2500 km². We're talking about 52 km², which is a 7.2 km × 7.2 km square. Shitty dimensional analysis strikes again!

According to the parent poster, those 52 km² are needed for 1GW. France needs around 50GW, 50 times more power and area, ergo 2500 km².

Oh, I see. Thank you for clarifying.

The US would need about 50x500km !