Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Is About to Take Off
As I’ve written many times, I believe we’ll be seeing several OTEC plants put into operation over the next few years, rapidly replacing diesel generators as the main source of electricity for the one billion people who live near tropical oceans.
In addition to its cleanliness, the beauty of OTEC is its constancy; unlike solar and wind, OTEC is not a variable resource, but rather a 24/7 source of baseload power.
Accredited investors may wish to join me and literally 300 others who own stock in the leading company in this industry: OTECorporation. No, that’s neither a typo nor an exaggeration; over 300 people have come forth and bought stock in this early-stage rapid-growth organization – all of us thrilled to be aboard.
Here’s the specific tab on the OTECorporation website if you’re interested in learning more.
As I understand it OTEC requires both warm and cold water to operate and obtaining both in a single geographic location is the most difficult obstacle to overcome. My firm offers a new technology that can use storm debris and many forms of biomass to replace diesel power. I hope potential investors will visit my Advanced Alternative Energy Corp. webpages and see what this approach looks like by viewing one of my prototypes and message me online via Facebook or LinkedIn for my position paper.
Warm and cold water are available in close proximity wherever you have deep tropical waters. Why? Because whatever the surface water temperature, deep water will always be at around 4 centigrade.
What you do need to make it viable is a very large system, as energy extraction is only 1 or 2% because of the constraints of Carnot efficiency – however given the volume of warm and cool waters available in the tropical oceans, this is not really much of a limitation provided you have a load of 100MW plus (smaller systems are unlikely to be cost effective, so for small tropical island communities, the system may not be viable).
Re: your first paragraph, this is true. But not all tropical coastlines provide easy access to deep water.
A professional engineer wrote just now: I studied these systems several years ago and thought they had great potential. One thing I noted was that the colder water can sometimes contain lots of nutrients and when brought to the surface and warmed it might be quite useful in creating more bountiful marine life. Good for fishing and such.
I respond: That’s interesting. I’m sure they’ll be certain unintended consequences; it would be great if they were a net positive.
With the small amount of power available with the available temperature difference, it would be difficult to have the power generated great enough to overcome the parasitic losses.
Craig: As I have read sometime ago, I understand that OTEC systems will change the water temperature difference (if it is widely used) and that would contribute to changing the deep ocean currents that keep the natural currents and temperature balances around the world. Has this knoledge been investigated enough?
We have already changed the salinity balance of the water by melting the ice caps and other ice cover around the world, adding fresh water in big enough quantities and the CO2 disolving in seawater has raised acidity, the dumping of chemicals has not helped any either.
Now we need fresh water and are desalinating seawater to get it, and will continue to do that because we need water to survive. I think we are growing our realization of the complex relationships of our environment and the effects we are causing.
All this just should make everybody realize the damage we have made and the changes we should be doing now.