Moreover, the SPS has technical capabilities that make a system of satellitesand rectennas capable of more flexible modes of operation which are of much greater value to electricity supply companies, and therefore potentially more profitable to satellite operators. Supplying baseload power narrows the scope for the SPS operation, and ignores a major part of the systems’s potential value. It also sets the most demanding cost targets for the SPS, since it would be in competition with other base-load plans with the lowest operating costs. Alternative Assessment Method An important feature of the SPS project is that it involves two distinct industries, space engineering and electricity supply, whose fields of expertise are both essential to the project, but very different. One possibility for overcoming this difficulty is to treat the ground segment and the space segment as two separate investment projects: Thus a utility would construct, own and operate a rectenna integrated into its power supply grid but a different organisation would own the satellite and be responsible for its operation and maintenance. The utility would then purchase microwave ’fuel’ from the satellite company. Such a division of the overall system would have considerable similarities to the operation of international satellite telecommunications: INTELSAT commissions, purchases and operates telecommunications satellites, and leases channels to its users who construct, operate and control their own Earth terminals. It would also be similar to the new, non-integrated structure of the electricity sector in the United Kingdom, where a number of local distribution companies purchase electricity from a range of generators. Cost targets for the space segment could be found as follows. Utilities would estimate the cost to them of installing and operating a rectenna in their grid, and would calculate what additional price it would be economic for them to pay for microwave ‘fuel’ under different conditions. This would then provide the targets for the satellite company’s costs. The evaluation of the SPS proposal would be much enhanced by the direct involvement of utilities. However, the prospect of financing an extremely large capital investment in a field with which they arc unfamiliar is not attractive to utilities. One advantage of the approach outlined above is that the technological and economic uncertainties concerning the rectenna are much less than those relating to the space segment. Most of the major technologies involved in the rectenna lie within utilities’ existing fields of expertise, and so they could become independently involved from a very early stage. Rectenna Cost Contribution Every rectenna would, to a considerable extent, be unique both in the civil engineering requirements of the site and in its electrical connections to the existing grid. However, the method proposed above can be demonstrated in a simplified
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==