How many PVs do you need?

More specifically: what's the area of solar panels that you need to power a country?

Wind Power in the USA

Seen on Maps Mania: America Powered by Wind

• The U.S. Wind Turbine Database (USWTDB)
• Wind Farms Through the Years
• Global Wind Atlas

Population

Resource Watch

Resource Watch is a pretty incredible web mapping tool. You can load-in all kinds of data sets and also download the underlying data, for example the Global Power Plant Database or the Climate Vulnerability Index.

SplashMaps

SplashMaps makes the perfect gift: define your area of interest and they make you a wearable map.

The Power of Ten using Census Data

That sounds weird, but works very well - zooming-out from a census block to the country and you can pick your starting location: A map "dealing with the relative size of things" in the American Census

ArcGIS Image Analyst

People always forget: ArcGIS Image Analyst is part of ArcMap / ArcGIS Pro and works just fine for image analysis in my (limited) experience. Now also available for free with ArcGIS for Personal Use and ArcGIS for Student Use.