Value chain · CLM-1061
In plain terms
In one 1980 volume the satellite cost anywhere from about 2,300 to 3,800 dollars a kilowatt depending on who added what - and the programme office said in print that none of it was official. The high-side cases, as printed, ran to four or five times the base, and one of those printed values may be a total carried into the wrong row.
The claim as recorded
The April 1980 Program Review carries six capital-cost figures for the reference satellite on six bases, and the programme office's own is labelled unofficial: JSC's scenario "in Billions of 1977 $" - Research .4, Engineering 8.1, Demonstration 23.0, Investment 57.5, First Unit 13.5, Total 102.5, Average Unit 11.5 - under "No official estimates exist. This is one of several estimates", obtained "from studies conducted by the Boeing Aerospace Company"; Argonne's comparative-assessment table, SPS base capital cost 3,400 and high 15,800 in 1978 $/kW, high/low ratio 4.6, O&M 16 mills/kWh, capacity factor 0.90 against coal 800 and 1,600 and LWR 1,200 and 2,800; Argonne's cost-and-performance table, silicon 60-unit direct 11,073, indirect 464, investment 1,793, contingency 2,133, owner's costs 463, interest during construction 772, total 16,698 million 1978 dollars, "1978 Nominal Cost ($/KW)" 3,340 (3,575 at 30 units, 3,812 at 20; GaAlAs 3,079, 3,314, 3,552), year-2000 low 3,139, nominal 3,646 and high 16,698; Boeing's "$2,340/KW if purchased now" against nuclear "$1300/KW" and coal $1,000; Argonne's "most probable cost ... $3,650 per kilowatt (1978 $), together with a lower limit of $3,150"; and British Aerospace's "TOTAL SPS COSTS (INV/SATELLITE)" of 13.9 B$ for the Rockwell and 12.3 B$ for the Boeing point design.
Evidence behind this: T3, six capital-cost figures on six bases from six conference abstracts, four of them tables read from renders; none derived on the page.
Scope and limits
The bases differ: JSC's average unit is recurring production cost in 1977 dollars; Samsa's 3,340 adds contingency, owner's costs and interest in 1978 dollars; Riches's 3,400 is a comparative-assessment input; Johnson's 2,340 is a Boeing "if purchased now"; Henderson's 12.3 and 13.9 are unsourced on the page. None is derived in the proceedings.
What it assumes
11.5 billion 1977 dollars per 5 GW is 2,300 $/kW, arithmetic on the stated figures.
Where it comes from
PDF p.127 / printed 104, Table 1, render read: as stated; the table carries no asterisk or footnote. PDF p.126 / printed 103: the page says a number of cost estimates have been developed during the Concept Evaluation Program and that "It should be noted that no official cost estimate exists for an SPS program at the present time". PDF p.168 / printed 145, Table 2, render read: rows as in CLM-1060, under the footnote the claim quotes, "* No official estimates exist. This is one of several estimates."; PDF p.167 / printed 144: "The estimated costs presented in table 2 were obtained from studies conducted by the Boeing Aerospace Company as part of the SPS System Definition effort." PDF p.92 / printed 69, Table 2 "Cost and Technology Assumptions for Year 2,000 Technologies", render read: SPS column 3,400; 15,800; 4.6; 16; 5,000 MWe; 0.90; "* Fusion data was not available for publication". PDF p.171 / printed 148, Table 1, render read: values as stated; "(a) Physical Confinement not Proven" for fusion's high case. PDF p.615 / printed 595, Figure 2, render read: Plant Cost ($/KW) $1000 $1300 $2340; Plant Factor (%) .72 .76 .92; Plant Cost $10.4B $17.4B $16.8B; the text says "coal plants at $100/KW.*" where the figure prints $1000. PDF p.656 / printed 636, normalised: "An estimate of the most probable cost of SPS installations in production has been provided by M. Samsa of Argonne National Laboratory; namely $3,650 per kilowatt (1978 $), together with a lower limit of $3,150"; "Most probable cost, SPS plant 41.0" mills/kWh against coal plant 8.0. PDF p.380 / printed 358, Table 1, render read: "Rockwell Point Design 13.9 B$", "Boeing Point Design 12.3B$", multibeam "303% *" and "215% *", "* Excluding Space Transportation."
Basis: billions of 1977 dollars; 1978 dollars per kW; billions of dollars per satellite
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-037 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1061
CLM-1061, Energy Aperture, as of 1980-04.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-449
- CLM-0964To build two of these satellites a year, about 300 tonnes of material had to arrive at the orbital construction site every day. Getting it...CLM-0974The 1978 reference design shows every loss between sunlight and the power grid as a chain of numbered boxes, and the boxes multiply out...CLM-0975Depending on which published assumptions you take, a satellite needs between about 2 and 6 square kilometres of solar blanket for every...CLM-1058The often-repeated claim that the magnetron is 188 decibels quieter than its carrier traces to a conference abstract in which the tube...CLM-1059By spring 1980 the engineers, the reviewing panel and the ionosphere experimenters were all saying the beam-intensity ceiling the whole...CLM-1060The 1980 review did not agree with itself on how much of a satellite's cost was rockets: one paper said over a third, the programme's own...CLM-1062In 1980 the launch vehicle that everything was costed on was said by its own designers to be arbitrarily big, and they proposed a rocket a...CLM-1063In 1980 the magnetron satellite was the lightest per kilowatt on paper and the most efficient tube on the bench, the klystron was the...More on the source page.