TECHNICAL MEMORANDUM CANDIDATE LOCATIONS FOR SPS RECTIFYING ANTENNAS I. INTRODUCTION Due to the continuing search for new, renewable sources of electric energy to power our energy-intensive society, many groups across the country are considering the feasibility of Satellite Power Systems (SPS). Several alternate concepts for the SPS are being suggested, but most concepts involve generating electric energy at a station in geosynchronous Earth orbit and then beaming this energy to Earth in the form of microwaves. A rectifying antenna (rectenna) then collects this energy and rectifies it to de power. Afterwards, it is converted to 60 cycle ac and enters the U.S. power grid. For an ambitious SPS program with a buildup rate to 600 GW, 120 rectennas with 5 GW capacity are required [1]. For this analysis, the rectenna site, which contains the actual rectenna and a safety zone, is assumed to be a 15 mile diameter circle. In all cases, this is sufficient to contain the entire elliptical rectenna (which is somewhat longer at higher latitudes) and some safety zone. Figure 1 shows an artist’s concept of a rectenna site. An initial strategy of putting two sites in each state (except Alaska1) has been adopted. Notice that this strategy does not take the distribution of national electrical demand into account. However, after identifying 69 land sites, the remaining sites were placed in the oceans taking an estimated projection of demand into account. The following sections identify 120 preliminary rectenna sites. These sites are identified to illustrate the feasibility of locating 120 sites across the United States and are not suggested as actual locations for rectenna placement. 1. No rectennas will be placed in Alaska due to its high latitude and low population. All statistics quoted in this report exclude Alaska.
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