OTEC News

The Economist on OTEC

bjelkeman — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:36:27 +0000

The Economist has a short piece on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) in the 7 Jan 2012 print edition, Science and technology section. It is a decent overview, but as usual with The Economist, it is very anglocentric in its coverage. There is nothing about the work the Japanese (research and commercial), the Indians, the Dutch or the French are doing on the OTEC front. I did get an inquiry regarding this from the article author, and I failed to follow up, but it is all available here on OTEC News.

OTEC International LLC Chosen for Hawai’i OTEC Demonstration

bjelkeman — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:50:14 +0000

The According to this press release, OTEC International LLC has been selected to build a 1 MW OTEC at NELHA, Hawaii. The RFI for this went out recently, with a very short deadline, so we were wondering if the choice wasn’t a given from the start. The main investor in OTEC International has also invested in Seasolar Power earlier.

1MW OTEC RFI from NELHA

bjelkeman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:57:43 +0000

The Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) has published an RFI seeking submissions from firms and or government agencies interested in developing a 1 megawatt Ocean Thermal Energy (OTEC) project at its 870 acre Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology (HOST Park) in Kailua-Kona on the Island of Hawaii.

Interestingly enough, the RFI was published on 30 September 2011, all questions must be answered by 14 October and the submission must be in by 31 October. Which means that if you are planning to reply to this you need to hurry up!

Curaçao Ecopark with SWAC and OTEC research

bjelkeman — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:12:09 +0000

The Curaçao Airport Holding company are working on a an “industrial park for high-tech production and research facilities with a sustainable character” called an Ecopark and have recently signed an MOU with a German company, Bricks International to develop a draft plan for the Ecopark. The concept was designed (PDF file) by a Dutch company, Bluerise, which is a startup company in the OTEC technology-provider space. Interestingly enough, the Ecopark vision is focused around Seawater Air Conditioning (SWAC), OTEC research, cold-bed agriculture, mariculture and algea farms, essentially taking inspiration from the Hawaii based NELHA.

BEC and OTE Corp. signs MoU for two OTEC plants in the Bahamas

bjelkeman — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:51:15 +0000

Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation and Bahamas Electricity Corporation has according to Green Technology World, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop two OTEC plants in the Bahamas. The press release claims these will be the worlds first two commercially operational plants.

OTEC discussions on LinkedIn

bjelkeman — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:49:15 +0000

On LinkedIn there is a discussion group about OTEC which has some momentum, and 71 subscribing members as I write this. I suggest you join it if you are interested in OTEC.

Bahamas would want OTEC

bjelkeman — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:20:06 +0000

The Tribune reports on the National Energy Policy Committee’s second report, which talk about OTEC.

“Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) processes also represent an exploitable renewable resource,” the Committee’s report said. “As the Bahama Banks are characterised by steep drop-offs, most of the major islands have a location where OTEC technology would be feasible. However, this technology is at the experimental stage.”

We aren’t dead yet

bjelkeman — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:02:39 +0000

So that was a fairly long hiatus. We are working on migrating OTEC News from Blogger to our own WordPress installation. So you are going to see a few rough edges around here for a while. Don’t hesitate to send us stories at editor@otecnews.org Thanks!

OTEC for Marshall Islands

bjelkeman — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:27:00 +0000

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

bjelkeman — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:07:00 +0000

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.