Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation Going Public
Long-term readers will recall my frequent posts a few years ago about the marketing work I was doing for my client Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation, for which I got paid an equal balance of cash and stock. Looks like a liquidity event is happening in the next 30 days, as the company will be listed on the OTC, making it the first and only publicly traded OTEC company in the world.
OTEC is one of those clean energy technologies that has an important, but yet limited role to play in the migration away from fossil fuels. It uses the differential in temperature between the warm waters on the surface of the ocean, and the much colder waters below, and therefore, it works only where that differential is very high, meaning locations close to the equator. In addition to that constraint, a few other things need to be in place:
• Cold water (i.e., deep water) close to land
• Fairly high population density at these sites
• Nonexistent, expensive and/or environmentally dirty competitive solutions
Given all this, however, there are many hundreds of millions of people living on Earth that have this precise set of conditions.
I might have to celebrate with a martini tonight. (Hendrick’s is the best.)
From the research I have done with OTEC it is an industry that took 30 years of government research on Hawaii and is attempting to turn it into a commercial company.
A problems is its low efficiency. The counter to this is adding additional revenue streams like district air conditioning and desalinating to get fresh water. They were concentrating on Islands as a location for the deployment.
Islands also often have lots of sun and wind so this makes it a bit of a challenging fit. But who knows perhaps if a low efficiency energy technology can be made to work it will have implications for the similar technology of enhanced geothermal energy and the quite different updraft solar towers.
Technical efficiency (about 2% I believe) is broadly irrelevant. Photosynthesis tops out at about 4%, and is the basis of the vast majority of life on this planet!
What is important is financial efficiency, and sustainability.
If OTEC can deliver base load power in a place like Hawaii at a cost lower than fossil fuels, it becomes attractive.
On sustainability, I think the main concern would be around introducing heat to the sea bed, and the possibly release of methane from methane clatherates as a result. You would have to know what is on the sea bed where you were installing the system.
Hi Gary, not to be disputatious, I would have to agree that when it comes to comparisons between fossil fuels and alternative energy efficiency may not be the best metric.
But efficiency would be a consideration among alternatives as the measure also suggests a better return on energy invested. Photovoltaics appears to be about 10 times as efficient, and wind may be as much as 15 times as efficient. So while existing generation may be from fossil fuels the competition would be against all alternatives.
A comparison with Photosynthesis may be a bit “apples to oranges.” While Photosynthesis is said to have a 1% to 5% efficiency depending upon your sources we could say that this “technology” has a significant advantage in “market penetration,” with “minimal competition” in its energy “niche.” (;|) Photosynthesis is also a “fuel” technology (and the ancient basis for fossil fuels) while all the alternatives are primarily concerned with creating electrical energy.
Some successful island moves away from fossil fuels have also incorporated energy storage (pumped hydro on an island in Tenerife,) so even intermittency would not be an issue though many small grids don’t have 27/7 power in any event. http://www.ecowatch.com/5-islands-leading-the-charge-toward-100-renewable-energy-1882082979.html
While I like the technological initiatives of OTEC and feel it should be supported, if I were making the decision on an island it would seem to be only the adjunct factors of water and district AC that would tip the decision to OTEC. Can a company make a business in such a field? We shall have to see. If they can find a way, it may have implications for other low efficiency energy technologies.
A place like Hawaii is big enough so that water is not so much of an issue. The weather there is so remarkable that AC is not an absolute necessity. They also seem to have extensive plans for energy storage: https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-hawaii/producing-clean-energy/other-routes-to-clean-energy/energy-storage
In my last readings, the OTEC was knocking on the door of Caribbean islands which may be a better market. If I were on their sales team, I would also be making a pitch to some of the undersea mining operations which presently plan to pump lots of water from the ocean floor a mile down but use diesel generators on factory ships for power. It seems like a perfect match. (I have written articles on both technologies.)
Craig,
I wish you all the best, although it’s difficult to see how such a cumbersome and difficult technology can become commercially feasible.
However, i sincerely wish you the best of good fortune.
I appreciate the good wishes.
Well, as I’ve written a great deal recently, the cost-related improvements in wind and especially solar are in the process of closing the door on other technologies. OTEC is baseload, fortunately, so that counts for something.