Value chain · CLM-1103
In plain terms
Mapped at the scale of one receiver per cell, two-fifths of the country was not ruled out; look closer and seven in ten of those cells fail too, mostly on terrain; take out farmland and a quarter is left. The study still found enough room in every region, with the caveats that its own numbers imply.
The claim as recorded
Rice and Kotin's 1980 screen mapped "37 different variables" on 13 km cells and found that "Of the 52,500 cells that make up the land area, 31,200 are excluded" by fifteen absolute exclusions, "The remaining 21,300 cells" being nominally eligible "and account for 40 percent of the land area"; that topography, population and electromagnetic compatibility have the largest incremental effects ("Without topography there would be 6,600 more eligible cells and the eligible proportion would increase from 40 to" 53 per cent; population 6,200 cells, to 52 per cent; the EMC group "only 3,600 cells or approximately 7 percent of the total land area"); that adding federal dedicated lands reduces the eligible share "to 35 from 40 percent" and "the exclusion of private agricultural lands dramatically reduces the proportion of available land to 25 percent", and selected flyways to 19; that in a validation "random sample of 360 cells (180 eligible and 180 excluded)" no excluded cell should have been eligible but "Of the 180 cells examined on a regionally weighted basis, 71 percent had to be reclassified", falling to 24 per cent "Without considering topography", with marshlands 8, inland water 11 and recreation areas 9 per cent; that the 60 rectennas allocate "from 2 in MARCA to 13 in the Southeast" by year-2000 generation; and that the supply of eligible areas "is not a key constra" int, subject to the qualifications that eligibility means only not excluded nationally and that eliminating eligible clusters smaller than nine rectennas removes much of the eastern United States.
Evidence behind this: T3-the programme's national siting screen, with its own validation sample and its own qualifications.
Scope and limits
NOMINAL ELIGIBILITY ONLY, BY THE STUDY'S OWN REPEATED CAVEAT, AND A VALIDATION THAT RECLASSIFIED 71 PER CENT OF ELIGIBLE CELLS; the abstract's 24 per cent and the text's 24 per cent are the same non-topographic reclassification. The regional allocation is by generation share in 2000, which the study says "may not adequately reflect changes in generation" in 2000-2030 (raw, PDF 28). The exhibit's unit "trillion kilowatt hours" is a slip for billion.
What it assumes
1979 EIA generation projections for 2000 (4,355 to 4,438 billion kWh); the 1978 reference rectenna site of CLM-1102.
Where it comes from
PDF 11 / printed 2, normalised: "A total of 37 different variables, some with several gradients, were mapped". PDF 13 / printed 4, normalised: "Of the 52,500 cells that make up the land area, 31,200 are excluded"; raw: "The remaining 21,300 cells represent" nominally eligible locations "and account for 40 percent of the land area". PDF 18 / printed 9, normalised: "Without topography there would be 6,600 more eligible cells and the eligible proportion would increase from 40 to" 53 percent; "For population, the net incremental impact is 6,200 cells which would increase the eligible proportion from 40 to 52 percent"; "the net incremental effect is only 3,600 cells or approximately 7 percent of the total land area"; raw: "reducing the available land to 35 from 40 percent"; normalised: "the exclusion of private agricultural lands dramatically reduces the proportion of available land to 25 percent". PDF 19 / printed 10, Exhibit 5 (layer): 21,320 cells 40%; 18,492 35%; 17,918 34%; 13,323 25%; 9,786 19%. PDF 23 / printed 14, normalised: "a random sample of 360 cells (180 eligible and 180 excluded)"; "This analysis revealed no instances in which an area designated as excluded should have been reclassified as eligible"; "Of the 180 cells examined on a regionally weighted basis, 71 percent had to be reclassified"; "Without considering topography, the reclassification rate drops to 24 percent"; raw: "marshlands (8%)", "recreational areas (9%)", inland water 11 per cent. PDF 28 / printed 19, normalised: "ranges from 2 in MARCA to 13 in the Southeast"; "the total range of generation was from 4,355 trillion kilowatt hours to 4,438 trillion kilowatt hours" (the page's unit; 4,355 billion kWh is meant). PDF 29 / printed 20, Exhibit 8: ECAR 9, ERCOT 5, MAAC 4, MAIN 5, MARCA 2, NPCC 5, SERC 13, SPP 6, WSCC 11 (sum 60). PDF 30 / printed 21, Exhibit 9 (layer and render, columns checked against the row labels and the row total): net eligible cells without isolated areas ECAR 314, ERCOT 853, MAAC 21, MAIN 450, MARCA 4,233, NPCC 451, SERC 165, SPP 2,490, WSCC 5,578, total 14,555; per required site MAAC 5.3 and SERC 12.7 against WSCC 507 and MARCA 2,116. PDF 2, abstract: raw "almost 24 percent of the" eligible areas should also be excluded; normalised "An additional 47 percent of the areas posed potentially very costly topographic problems"; normalised "clusters with less than nine times the area of one rectenna eliminates much of the Eastern U.S."; "a four-to-one adjacent" eligible-area test "poses no such problem"; raw "the supply of eligible areas is not a key constra" int.
Basis: 13 km grid cells of the contiguous United States; per cent of land area; rectennas per NERC region
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-007 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1103
CLM-1103, Energy Aperture, as of 1980-04.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-565
- CLM-1102The receiving station the siting maps were drawn for is an oval twelve kilometres wide and, in the middle of the United States, sixteen...CLM-1104The siting maps kept receivers 150 km from radio telescopes, 100 km from NASA's deep-space stations, 60 km from air traffic radars and 50...