OTEC News - News about Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

OTEC for Marshall Islands

2010-02-15T23:27:00.002+01:00

OTEC for Marshall Islands
I have in my hand, figuratively if not literally, a letter which shows that an OTEC development company has approached the government of the Marshall Islands and proposed a 10 MW OTEC plant which also will produce 2 million gallons/day water (which I presume is drinking water). The letter, issued in early January 2009, which is from the Marshall Island government, says that several ministries are authorised to go ahead and negotiate terms with the company.

Problems with the blog

2010-02-15T23:07:00.004+01:00

Problems with the blog
We use some tools from Google to run OTEC News. Google announce the other day that they are going to stop supplying some of the tools we have been using to run OTEC News from 1 May 2010. This means that we will have to move it to another system. This is not a huge issue, if it wasn't for the fact that we are working all hours of the day already. So OTEC News may be quite for some time if this turns out to be more cumbersome than we though. Just so you know. We are not intending to stop writing OTEC News.

French president talks OTEC for Reunion Island

2010-02-15T22:14:00.005+01:00

French president talks OTEC for Reunion Island
According to L'Agence R�gionale de l'Energie R�union (ARER), the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in a recent visit to the Reunion Island, set out a plan to make Reunion carbondioxide neutral by 2030. "Accompanied by M. Boissier, the corporate executive of the first European military shipbuilder DCNS, the French President appointed Reunion Island as the place of demonstration and experimentation for the OTEC." This project is supposedly co-financed by the French government.

NOAA bureaucracy a threat to OTEC?

2009-12-14T10:07:00.003+01:00

NOAA bureaucracy a threat to OTEC?
Doug Carlsson wonders if NOAA bureaucracy could be a major threat to OTEC implementation?

He tells us the grapewine provides the following rumours: "NOAA is so gummed up with bureaucratic inertia due to the �shell shock� it feels over the enormity of ocean thermal energy conversion that it will demand five years of operating data from even a pilot plant before giving OTEC its regulatory blessing.

We would love to hear from anyone who can confirm or deny these fears.

French defence manufacturer working on OTEC?

2009-12-10T05:37:00.004+01:00

French defence manufacturer working on OTEC?
Ares, a blog at Aviation Week, is saying that "Expansion is also planned into the renewable marine energy sector. An �incubator� will be set up in the Atlantic port of Brest to manage development of floating wind turbine, wave energy turbine, and ocean thermal energy converter demonstrators or prototypes and DCNS will take part in European programs to develop marine current turbines."

Honolulu SWAC

2009-11-27T00:16:00.004+01:00

Honolulu SWAC
Honolulu Weekly has an article about the $240 million sea water air-conditioning system (SWAC) which is being built for Honolulu.

"Groundbreaking is expected next summer and the first 40 buildings are expected to come online in late 2012. " And there are investors from Stockholm involved, which is interesting, as one of the first systems in the world was built in Stockholm (where I live) and this is being expanded.

US NOAA visits Hawaii to talk OTEC

2009-11-20T13:17:00.004+01:00

US NOAA visits Hawaii to talk OTEC
Doug Carlson tells us about a visit by people from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Hawaii, where they learned more about the OTEC efforts planned for the islands. The visitors will, according to Doug, be responsible for "issuing licenses and permits for OTEC plants and operations".

"The NOAA team�s meetings in Hawaii �have brought home how much our learning curve has to be based on what�s happening here in Hawaii,� Kehoe said, adding that he believes Hawaii will be the site for the first OTEC demonstration plant. That first plant therefore will be tailored to the issues that will emerge regarding OTEC here." "

US Navy signs $8 million OTEC deal with Lockheed Martin

2009-11-01T16:25:00.003+01:00

US Navy signs $8 million OTEC deal with Lockheed Martin
Slightly old news is that Lockheed Martin has penned a deal with the US Navy in September 2009 to "develop critical OTEC system components and further mature its design for an OTEC pilot plant, an incremental step in developing large-scale utility plants. A key part of maturing the plant design includes developing an interface between the system�s cold water pipe and the platform". The deal is worth just over US$8 million.

Coldwater pipe for Indian 1 MW OTEC barge ready

2009-11-01T15:48:00.004+01:00

Coldwater pipe for Indian 1 MW OTEC barge ready
According to Silicon India the Indian Department of Ocean Development's (DOD) OTEC project is ready to deploy a one kilometre deep cold water pipeline. The pipeline will be installed on a one megawatt barge mounted OTEC installation. DOD secretary Harsh K. Gupta said the one-kilometre-deep underwater pipeline is complete. The barge is ready "and the DOD technical team is only waiting for a fair weather window" to connect the line to the barge".

Edit: A reader points out that this article was published on 22 January 2004. Thanks Paul! Not sure how that ended up in my news queue. Sorry about that.

Bill Gates want to use cold seawater to stop hurricanes

2009-07-17T15:18:00.004+02:00

Bill Gates want to use cold seawater to stop hurricanes
@hexayurt told me about a system which would use hot seawater to power a process to bring up cold seawater to the surface, and that way "steal" some of the energy which a hurricane uses. This has been mentioned in several places, but here is a sample article about it. Seems to me that a back of the envelope calculation on the thermodynamics of this can give a quick answer to the question: would it work?

Jamaica Observer on OTEC and SWAC

2009-07-17T14:35:00.002+02:00

Jamaica Observer on OTEC and SWAC
An article in the Jamaica Observer talks about OTEC and Seawater Air Conditioning (SWAC) and specifically mentions SOS Caribe (Soluciones Sostenibles) as wanting to implement SWAC in the Dominican Republic for an ice cream company.

Guam OTEC numbers missleading

2009-07-17T14:26:00.004+02:00

Guam OTEC numbers misleading
According to people who are familiar with the subject (but wanted to remain anonymous) the $1.5 billion quoted as US Navy OTEC work for Guam is essentially wrong. My sources said that they didn't think it would be more than a tenth of that at most. Furthermore, nobody actually knows today where and if the US Navy actually will build any OTEC facilities. The feasibility studies may (or may not) lead to OTEC development at Hawaii, Diego Garcia or Guam.

Guam OTEC

2009-06-29T22:36:00.003+02:00

Guam OTEC
An interview with American Samoa Territorial Energy Office (TEO) Acting Director Mauigoa Reupena Tagaloa, with Radio New Zealand International, triggered a couple of articles on Guam Newsfactor. The most interesting part of the articles may be the claim that the US Navy would be spending 1.5 Billion to build OTEC for the military facilities on Guam. That seems like a very high number and I would be interested to hear what has been included in that.

Guam News Factor on OTEC and the US Navy

2009-06-03T11:02:00.002+02:00

Guam News Factor on OTEC and the US Navy A piece which investigates the potential relationship between the US Navy and the Guam civil society around shared resources, including fresh water production and power generation.

US Navy moving forward with OTEC

2009-05-22T16:57:00.004+02:00

US Navy moving forward with OTEC
The list of people who attended the US Navy "Industry forum day" about OTEC on the 15 May, pretty much reads like a 'who's who' in OTEC in the USA. The presentation mentions possible OTEC installations being Diego Garcia, Guam and three locations in Hawaii. The OTEC roadmap at the end of [PDF] the presentation says that the preliminary design is done and they are in the middle of subsystem design with work on CWP (cold water pipe?) and heat exchanger ongoing.

NY Times on OTEC and SWAC

2009-05-01T12:23:00.007+02:00

NY Times on OTEC and SWAC

The New York Times carries an article about OTEC, focusing on Lockheed Martin's work in Hawaii. There is also a blog piece on the potential for using seawater for air-conditioning (SWAC) in the same location. The piece has the normal sceptic questions: "�just how economical it can be.� and "�[SWAC] doesn't work for high-rises with individualized air-conditioning units,�

I would argue that SWAC indeed works for high-rises with individual aircon units. Why shouldn't it work in Honolulu when it works in Stockholm? You just have to get away from the fear of infrastructure. Most of Stockholm, Sweden, has district heating, and has installed a substantial district cooling network based on seawater as well. There are very few individual aircon units to be found in Stockholm, because people are not afraid of investing in infrastructure which makes sense. And SWAC makes a lot of sense. Stockholm isn't even that hot in the summer, in Hawaii it should be a no-brainer.

With regards to OTEC and price. OTEC is one of the few large scale renewable energy system which can provide base load independent of what the weather is like. Hawaii is in the perfect location for it, it has the engineering skill locally, it is part of the largest economy in the world. The question is: does it have the guts to free itself from oil?

OTEC feasibility study for Reunion

2009-04-09T19:15:00.002+02:00

OTEC feasibility study for Reunion

The French naval defence system company DCNS Group on 7 April 2009 signed an agreement with the regional council of Reunion for a feasibility study for an OTEC installation on Reunion. Several defence contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and DCNS are moving into the energy market via OTEC whilst there seem to be scant interest from the traditional energy companies.

Lockheed Martin looking for OTEC technology in India?

2009-02-23T21:51:00.005+01:00

Lockheed Martin looking for OTEC technology in India?
According to the Indian newspaper The Mint, Lockheed Martin are looking to acquire OTEC technology from India. This has supposedly been leaked from a government official. This would supposedly be about deep pipe technology. One wonders if rumour is overplayed, considering that the most well respected company in the world, when it comes to deep seawater pipes is Makai Ocean Engineering, based in Hawaii. I would love to hear more about what you think at: thomas@otecnews.org

Patrick Takahashi on energy economy

2009-01-31T19:16:00.004+01:00

Patrick Takahashi on energy economy
Patrick Takahashi has a short article about this at the Huffington Post. He says among other things "abandon building any new uranium/plutonium and coal power plants, and install as many wind farms and residential and utility-scale solar thermal systems as fast as possible". More of Patrick's writing can be found on his blog.

(Another) Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcement

2008-12-26T15:15:00.003+01:00

(Another) Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcement
In a previous post I asked whether maybe publishing the list of IPP projects was a mistake? It wasn't, says a source on Hawaii which didn't want to be named. Interesting. I contacted Sea Solar Power, ~~and I didn't get an answer, but then I am not surprised by that~~ and I did end up talking to Rob Nicholson of Sea Solar Power International. They can't really comment right now about what is going on. I presume we'll hear more about this later.

Edit: I didn't word that very well. I made it sound like I was negatively disposed to Sea Solar Power, which I am not.

US Navy Diego Garcia OTEC will do SWAC as well

2008-12-26T15:07:00.004+01:00

US Navy Diego Garcia OTEC will do SWAC as well
According to this short piece in the Federal Times, the Diego Garcia OTEC will be used to not only produce electricity and fresh water, as we have talked about earlier, but the cold water will also be used for sea water air conditioning (SWAC) as well, which I hadn't seen reported anywhere before.

US Navy investigating OTEC for Guam

2008-12-26T14:58:00.004+01:00

US Navy investigating OTEC for Guam
The US Navy is looking to "conduct a feasibility study for implementing an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) facility on Guam. More information can be found in the procurement notice, and the synopsis.

Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcement

2008-12-04T22:56:00.004+01:00

Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcement
I asked in a post the other day whether there was one or two OTEC plants under negotiation at Oahu, Hawaii. I asked a source in Hawaii about that and got the answer:

Having a list of potential IPP projects is unusual - the utility doesn't usually say anything about their negotiations.

Did they make a mistake when they published that document? I suppose the best thing would be to ask Bob Nicholson at Sea Solar Power. So I will...

To a Better Place

2008-12-04T22:35:00.003+01:00

To a Better Place
Doug Carlsson points us to the announcement that Better Place, the electric car network company, has picked Hawaii to be one of its initial implementation markets. Some of the others are: Denmark, Ireland, the Bay Area in California and Israel. This is interesting to us for several reasons. Better place has an interesting business model. Hawaii will have OTEC plants soon, and OTEC can then power cars. And our friend and colleague Mark Charmer over at the Movement Design Bureau has been tracking Shai Agassi and Better Place since before he started the company.

Not one, but two OTEC plants in Hawaii?

2008-12-02T11:57:00.005+01:00

Not one, but two OTEC plants in Hawaii?
Thanks to Maria Tome, Hawaii State Energy Office for confirming that the Lookheed Martin OTEC will be built on Oahu, Hawaii. She pointed to this Energy Agreement which was signed by the State of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Electric Companies.

Looking a little deeper into the 52 page agreement (2 MB PDF) I found something which I hadn't seemed mentioned before, and I am not sure I understand what it means. On page 45 in the document it says "Cumulative Target Goal (MW per year end)", and has a table. The Lookheed Martin OTEC is in there with 10 MW. But there is a second line with "Sea Solar OTEC 100 MW", to be in place at the same time as the Lookheed Martin installation. Sea Solar OTEC shows up on page 49 as well and as having a "completed term sheet" by Q3 2008, and a proposed "commercial operation date" of Q3 2013.

Is there a separate OTEC plant being negotiated with Sea Solar Power for Oahu, Hawaii?