OTEC is a proven, well-documented technology that extracts clean, renewable solar thermal energy from temperature differences in the ocean. While fusion has not yet reached that net positive plateau, in 1979, a group led by Lockheed showed for the first time in Hawaii that OTEC electricity was possible. The U.S. Federal government alone has spent more than $250 million on OTEC R&D. Japan, India, France and Taiwan have also expended many millions.
The early history of OTEC is all French. There are three primary production cycles: closed, open and hybrid. Jacques d’Arsonval, a French engineer, first proposed the closed cycle design, a system that used ammonia as the working fluid. You probably don’t recall that your home refrigerator once circulated ammonia, then Freon, which was subsequently banned by the Montreal Protocol in 1987 for causing ozone depletion, and today uses a more environmentally acceptable refrigerant, a hydrofluorocarbon. You can avoid any binary fluid by using the open cycle process, which produces the most amount of freshwater. This cycle was utilized by D’Arsonval’s student, Georges Claude, in 1928 off Cuba. As has been the experience with many ocean energy demonstrations, a major storm damaged the equipment before Claude was able to attain net positive electricity.
An early pioneer was J. Hilbert Anderson, founder of Sea Solar Power. He presented a paper to the American Chemical Society on April 9, 1975, entitled, “Sea Solar Power and the Chemical Industry,” which described his OTEC system, originally conceived in 1962. I recall meeting with him in the early 80’s when I worked in the U.S. Senate. Supposedly, the SSP design results in a system 8 times cheaper than the prototypes funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. I regularly meet with Bob Nicholson, who now represents that company, as he has for several decades.
The modern history of OTEC, though, is mostly Hawaiian, with a sprinkling of Japanese, although India was at one time ready to join the net-positive club. Mini-OTEC, a venture headed by Lockheed, reached a closed-cycle net output of 18 kW on a government barge off Keahole Point, Big Island of Hawaii in 1979. A few years later, a Japanese group succeeded with a 120 kW gross system, also of closed-cycle design, on Nauru, but was, like Claude, wiped out by a hurricane. OTEC-1 tested a one MW size heat exchanger and large coldwater pipe in Hawaiian waters in the 80’s, and a 260 kW gross open-cycle facility was built by the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) in the 90’s. The latter two projects were funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The early history of OTEC is all French. There are three primary production cycles: closed, open and hybrid. Jacques d’Arsonval, a French engineer, first proposed the closed cycle design, a system that used ammonia as the working fluid. You probably don’t recall that your home refrigerator once circulated ammonia, then Freon, which was subsequently banned by the Montreal Protocol in 1987 for causing ozone depletion, and today uses a more environmentally acceptable refrigerant, a hydrofluorocarbon. You can avoid any binary fluid by using the open cycle process, which produces the most amount of freshwater. This cycle was utilized by D’Arsonval’s student, Georges Claude, in 1928 off Cuba. As has been the experience with many ocean energy demonstrations, a major storm damaged the equipment before Claude was able to attain net positive electricity.
An early pioneer was J. Hilbert Anderson, founder of Sea Solar Power. He presented a paper to the American Chemical Society on April 9, 1975, entitled, “Sea Solar Power and the Chemical Industry,” which described his OTEC system, originally conceived in 1962. I recall meeting with him in the early 80’s when I worked in the U.S. Senate. Supposedly, the SSP design results in a system 8 times cheaper than the prototypes funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. I regularly meet with Bob Nicholson, who now represents that company, as he has for several decades.
The modern history of OTEC, though, is mostly Hawaiian, with a sprinkling of Japanese, although India was at one time ready to join the net-positive club. Mini-OTEC, a venture headed by Lockheed, reached a closed-cycle net output of 18 kW on a government barge off Keahole Point, Big Island of Hawaii in 1979. A few years later, a Japanese group succeeded with a 120 kW gross system, also of closed-cycle design, on Nauru, but was, like Claude, wiped out by a hurricane. OTEC-1 tested a one MW size heat exchanger and large coldwater pipe in Hawaiian waters in the 80’s, and a 260 kW gross open-cycle facility was built by the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) in the 90’s. The latter two projects were funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
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The price of oil jumped today to $126.52, just a tad over $3/gallon. However, the DJI jumped 186 to 11,584. Goldman Sachs predicted crude would hit $149 by the end of the year.
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No significant hurricane activity today.
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