Microwave "Fuel" Price In 1988/89 the average operating cost for the CEGB’s power stations was 3.53p/kWh [3], Future power stations may be of the combined cycle gas turbine type of advanced coal combustion technologies. James Capel [8] estimates the variable operating costs of such plants to be in the range 1.3-1.5 p/kWh, which implies an operating cost of around 3.0 p/kWh. Hence if the SPS were to be competitive with modern a coal-fired plant, the utility could pay up to 1.96p/kWh (ie 3.00-1.04) for microwave ‘fuel’ if the rectenna capital cost were £600/kW, the discount rate 10% and the load factor 90%. Alternatively, at 70% load factor, £400/kW capital cost and 5% discount rate, the utility could pay 2.38p/kWh. For the SPS to be economically viable its overall cost of electricity should be competitive with the alternatives. However, the criterion for being suitable to provide baseload power is that its operating costs should be competitive with other baseload plants - which is a more stringent condition. In the UK, nuclear power stations have the lowest running costs; the estimated generation cost for a new PWR power station is given by Jones & Woite as 0.98 p/kWh (1989 prices), [9]. Table 3 shows the maximum price which could be paid for microwave ’fuel’ if this target were to be met by a rectenna. It is thus possible that the SPS could become competitive as an energy source but not be high enough in a utility’s merit order to provide baseload power. In this case the expected flexibility of the power output of the SPS could be valuable in allowing the rectenna to perform two-shift operations. Although the rectenna would not achieve a high load factor, the satellite supplying it could still do so if it were to transmit microwave power to other rectennas some distance away around the globe, thereby acting as a peakload power source at several locations.
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