Candidate Locations for SPS Rectifying Antennas 1977

operations scheme should be developed to allow intermittent periods of nonpower site activity such as the harvesting of trees, crops, and fish. During these periods the microwave antenna may be switched to an alternate rectenna built for this purpose or turned off for scheduled maintenance. Rectenna design will also have to deal with bad weather and large elevation variations. However, these elevation variations could possibly be taken advantage of to orient the rectenna perpendicular to the beam and thus reduce the site area. A similar situation is encountered in sea settings. Planning can reduce the number of collisions of ships with rectennas by placing rectennas away from shipping lanes. Extremely tall platforms can be avoided either by careful placement or the design of floating rectennas (an option not available to land sites). Other areas of concern such as power transmission, rust, and weather must be handled by rectenna design. Planning must also include a careful mix of land and sea locations. It is evident that electrical energy demand in the Western States will increase at a high rate and will probably be concentrated near the Pacific coast. However, the extreme ocean depths encountered in the Pacific, if not handled by floating rectennas, may require the movement of some sea rectenna sites to sparsely populated areas of the Mountain, Western North Central, and Western South Central States. The Eastern States, however, will continue to be densely populated, and the electrical demand there will remain high. This could indicate the need for moving even more rectenna sites from this intensively used land into the shallow waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and, possibly, the Great Lakes. Thus, if rectenna placement is to correspond to electrical energy demand and if an ambitious SPS program such as described earlier is pursued, both land and sea rectenna sites will be required, and rectenna design studies should proceed accordingly. V. WORK REMAINING In the next phase of the rectenna location study, several improvements will be made to the present distribution and locations of the 120 rectennas. First, a section-by-section electrical demand projection for the year 2000 must be used to reevaluate the distribution of the rectennas. Most locations will probably remain unchanged by this exercise, but some off-shore sites may be moved inland and some inland sites may be moved off-shore. Also, some sites may be moved into the Great Lakes if the study indicates that this is feasible. After the redistribution is completed, new and old sites will be scrutinized.

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