Hawaii Wants an OTEC Plant, But How Thrilled Should We Be?
When I did some marketing consulting work for the Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation (OTECorp) a few years ago, they paid me with an equal mixture of cash and common stock, so I have an incentive to root for this technology to become an important part of the world’s energy mix.
Here’s what might be an encouraging sign: The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) has issued a request for proposal for an OTEC plant.
“Might be?” Why am I so guarded in my optimism? Unless the article has this wrong, the request is for a plant of between 100 and 300 KW (not MW). That’s the power required for 15 – 45 average houses.
Is it worth building? I can’t imagine why. The capex associated with OTEC isn’t like wind or solar, where costs increase more or less linearly with the power requirement. With OTEC, to generate your first milliwatt, you need a cold water pipe, i.e., a pipe that runs along the seabed to the point at which the water is deep enough to be significantly colder than it is at the surface.
I’d like to think aloha kind of thoughts here, but this sounds like it could be a boondoggle.
We also need to consider about the cost when it comes to the power requirement.
I am a little bit interested in an OTEC plant. But we need to consider it from different opinions
15 to 45 houses? That might be true for solar, but OTEC would be base load 24/7 power. I would say even with US consumption, you would be looking at a minimum of 100 to 300 houses. That said, I agree with you that there are likely VERY substantial economies of scale to be had which will certainly not be captured by 100 to 300 kW.