Value chain · CLM-1173
In plain terms
A 1980 European survey for offshore receiving stations looked only at the North Sea and the Channel, left the Atlantic and Mediterranean for later, and listed distance to the grid among its siting factors, though it chose the areas on its offshore factors alone. Because the beam's footprint stretches north to south at those latitudes, coasts running east to west fitted badly.
The claim as recorded
Collins's 1980 survey of offshore rectenna areas for Western Europe drew its twelve candidate areas from data on "the North Sea and Channel coasts"; the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, with "very few areas of water depth less than 25 metres", were left for "a later study"; "Distance to electricity grid interconnections" was one of the land-interface siting factors; and the footprint's elongation at about 50 degrees latitude "rules out some otherwise attractive areas, such as East-West coastlines".
Evidence behind this: T3-a contractor's programme-review abstract read in the held text layer; the pages name no area and carry no map in the text layer.
Scope and limits
AN ABSTRACT WITH NO AREA NAMES: the text layer of pp.550-551 names no area and gives no coordinates, and the renders of both pages (2026-09-24) show no figure or map. CLM-1078 carries the depth, distance and country counts from the same pages; this record adds only the coasts surveyed, the grid factor and the East-West coastline point. The Irish Sea is not among the coasts named. The text layer garbles the factor numbering.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
PDF p.550 / 529, NORM: "The Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of WE have very few areas of water depth less than 25 metres." and "These areas, and the deeper water areas, will be considered in a later study." (the second sentence reported, not quoted, beyond the probed span); the candidate areas were selected from data on "the North Sea and Channel coasts"; the land-interface factors include "Distance to electricity grid interconnections". Same page, NORM: "on the basis of factors 1 - 10 above, some twelve areas were selected"; factors 1 to 10 are offshore factors (water depth to other weather conditions), and the land-interface factors, grid distance among them, come after them in the list. PDF p.551 / 530, NORM: "rules out some otherwise attractive areas, such as East-West coastlines". Spans probed against extract/derived/SRC-449/text/ 2026-09-24.
Basis: named coasts; water depth in metres; siting factors
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1173
CLM-1173, 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-1061In 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...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...More on the source page.