RELATIONSHIP OF ELIGIBLE AREAS TO PROJECTED ELECTRICAL DEMAND Allan D. Kotin Kotin & Regan, Inc. Siting of 60 ground receiving stations (rectennas) for the SPS may pose a problem due to the large area per rectenna (15,000 hectares, 38,000 acres) and numerous siting constraints. This presentation extends the analysis of potentially "eligible" areas defined in an extensive computer mapping effort by Rice University in which conditions which would preclude rectenna construction were mapped on a 7.5 minute national grid in which each grid cell corresponds roughly to a single rectenna site. The major topics considered are: (1) other factors which will tend to reduce the number of available sites; (2) the relationship of eligible areas to the "need" for SPS power, as reflected in projected regional generation estimates; and (3) some preliminary ranking of U.S. regions in terms of siting difficulty. The use of smaller rectenna sizes has little effect in reducing the area excluded from consideration for potential rectenna sites. With a nominal ^-area site (9.1 x 7.2 km, excluding buffer) no excluded areas are reclassified as eligible. Even with a smaller %-area (6.5 x 5 km) rectenna, only 3% of the excluded sites become "eligible". The use of smaller sites does, however, increase the proportion of "eligible" sites which remain eligible upon closer scrutiny; the retention of "eligible" cells increases from 29% to 49% with a ^-size site and from 29% to 76% with a %-size site. Since the SPS reference concept includes a design only for land based rectennas, it is impossible to specify an appropriate set of exclusion variables for siting analysis which reflect the rectenna's structural design, e.g. bottom conditions, tide height and force, and numerous climate variables. An analysis of non-struc- tural exclusion variables, e.g. continental shelf, navigation lanes and electromagnetic (EMC) exclusion areas, suggests some enhanced availability on the Atlantic coast, mostly south of New Jersey and a modest increase in the Gulf and New England coasts. The likelihood of actually siting a rectenna in an isolated area with few adjacent eligible cells is considerably lower than in an area with a large number of adjacent "eligible" grid cells. Two classifications of isolation were established: (1) cells which did not fall within a two-by-two grid pattern of eligible cells, i.e. there are not at least four adjacent eligible cells within which to acquire one specific site; and (2) cells which did not fall within a three-by-three pattern containing nine adjacent eligible cells. Imposition of the three-by-three constraint on eligible areas almost eliminates eligible areas in the Mid-Atlantic (MAAC) region, where the number of eligible cells is reduced to 21 or only 2.7 percent of the total. In all other regions, there remain more than 150 eligible cells. The imposition of only a two-by-two constraint does not appear to have nearly as drastic an effect in the east and still leaves all other regions with substantial numbers of eligible cells. The relationship of eligible areas to regional power distribution indicates that there are an apparently adequate number of "nominally eligible" sites in all nine U.S. electric reliability council (ERC) planning regions in comparison to projected electrical generation. The projections of electrical generation by ERC region through the year 2000 were based on Mid-term (MEFS) projections and the
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