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Monday, February 15, 2010
 OTEC for Marshall IslandsI 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. Labels: marshallislands, otec, otec marshallislands French president talks OTEC for Reunion IslandAccording to L'Agence RŽgionale de l'Energie RŽunion (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. Monday, December 14, 2009
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. Thursday, December 10, 2009
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." Friday, November 20, 2009
US NOAA visits Hawaii to talk OTECDoug 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." " Sunday, November 01, 2009
US Navy signs $8 million OTEC deal with Lockheed MartinSlightly 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. Labels: lockheed martin, otec, US Navy 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. Friday, July 17, 2009
Jamaica Observer on OTEC and SWACAn 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. Labels: Dominican Republic, otec, swac 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. Labels: diego garcia, Guam, hawaii, otec, US Navy Monday, June 29, 2009
Guam OTECAn 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. Wednesday, June 03, 2009
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.
Friday, May 22, 2009
US Navy moving forward with OTECThe 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. Friday, May 01, 2009
NY Times on OTEC and SWACThe 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? Labels: lockheed martin, nelha, otec, swac Thursday, April 09, 2009
OTEC feasibility study for ReunionThe 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. Monday, February 23, 2009
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 Labels: india, lockheed martin, otec Saturday, January 31, 2009
 Patrick Takahashi on energy economyPatrick 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. Labels: coal, energy economy, nuclear, otec, solar Friday, December 26, 2008
(Another) Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcementIn 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, 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. Labels: oahu, otec, sea solar power US Navy Diego Garcia OTEC will do SWAC as wellAccording 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. Labels: diego garcia, otec, swac, US Navy US Navy investigating OTEC for GuamThe 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. Thursday, December 04, 2008
Follow up to Oahu, Hawaii, OTEC announcementI 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... Labels: hawaii, oahu, otec, sea solar power Tuesday, December 02, 2008
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? Monday, November 24, 2008
Boosting OTEC with solar thermal
Dr. Noboru Yamada, from Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan, earlier this year sent me a conference paper regarding "Thermal efficiency enhancement of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) using solar thermal energy" by him and his colleagues Akira Hoshi and Yasuyuki Ikegami. I neglected to put this into the library, but now it is there.Labels: otec, solar thermal Saturday, November 22, 2008
New Scientist on OTEC
New Scientist has a two page article on OTEC in the latest issue (19 Nov. 2008). The article mostly talks about issues related to the recent announcements that Lookheed will build a 10-20 MW OTEC in Hawaii, which we mentioned the other day.Labels: hawaii, lockheed martin, new scientist, otec Friday, November 21, 2008
Hawaii OTEC
Doug Carlsson at Hawaii Energy Options was the first of several people to highlight that the Hawaii governor announced that Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and the Lockheed Martin Corporation is going to build a 10 MW OTEC plant on Hawaii. What is interesting is that they are not announcing where, although one may presume it is at NELHA. Also it is going to be interesting to see how this announcement affects the smaller OTEC development companies, such as OCEES and Sea Solar Power, who have been holding the flame alive whilst OTEC was out in the oil induced cold. Edit: An unconfirmed report mentions Oahu as the location for the OTEC plant. Labels: hawaii, ITRI, lockheed martin, otec Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Ammonia Fuel Network Conference - 2008
 The Oil Drum has an overview written up by Neal Rauhauser from the Ammonia Fuel Network Conference, which was held at University of Minnesota recently. The conference presentations can be downloaded as well.Labels: ammonia, fertiliser, fuel, otec Tuesday, October 28, 2008
OTEC in the Bahamas?
According to this blog post one OTEC company, OCEES, submitted a proposal to the Bahamas Electricity Corporation with regards to a recent Request For Proposal for renewable energy systems.
Energy Island at US-China GreenTech Summit
Energy Island will be presenting their concept at US China GreenTech Summit in Shanghai, 12-14 November. Energy Island plans to use OTEC as part of the energy generation systems.Labels: energy island, otec Monday, October 27, 2008
OTEC implementation in Tahiti starts
According to a press notice on their web site Xenesys have announced that they are going to start the commercial implementation of OTEC in Tahiti. According to the notice, the news was released at a symposium at Saga University on the 17 October. It is unclear if this announcement adds anything significant to what we wrote about earlier. If what is reported is correct though, then it seems that they haven't decided on a location yet.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Xenesys starts joint venture in Tahiti
We missed in August that Xenesys signed a deal with Pacific Petroleum Company for a joint venture "to conduct commercial and technical studies to realize Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) in French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Vanuatu."
Thursday, October 09, 2008
New York Times writes about Lockheed Martin OTEC project
The NYT picked up on the Lockheed Martin press release about the grant from the US Department of Energy to "demonstrate a cold water pipe fabrication approach using modern fiberglass technology and recent low-cost composite material manufacturing methods at prototype and pilot plant scales". The Energy Daily also has some quotes from Lookheed Martin and indications that they are also working with Makai Ocean Engineering and others on this.Labels: cold water pipe, lockheed martin, makai, otec Friday, September 26, 2008
US DOE funds OTEC development, finally
Doug Carlson points out that the US Department of Energy will be financing water based energy projects with $7million. Most of the projects are either hydropower or wave power projects, but Lockheed Martin Corporation is doing a validation of "manufacturing techniques for coldwater pipes critical to OTEC in order to help create a more cost-effective OTEC system". University of Hawaii has been given money to "facilitate the development and implementation of commercial wave energy systems and to assist the private sector in moving ocean thermal energy conversion systems beyond proof-of-concept to pre-commercialization, long-term testing".
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The Guardian about the Seawater Greenhouse and the Sahara forest project
 The UK newspaper The Guardian writes about the ambitious concept the Sahara forest project which is about using seawater and using solar power to grow food in the dessert. The concept uses Seawater Greenhouses as an integral component to make the dessert a sustainable food production facility. Any seawater airconditioning installation (SWAC) or OTEC installation can use "waste" cold seawater effectively in Seawater Greenhouses, so this is relevant for the OTEC community too.Labels: otec, seawatergreenhouse, swac Friday, July 04, 2008
Marshall islands sees OTEC as way out of emergency
Yokwe Online reports that the Marshall islands president has declared an economic state of emergency, due to energy prices. One part of the declaration looks at the long term and states that OTEC should be investigated as renewable energy source, the only alternative other than conservation mentioned by name.Labels: otec Thursday, July 03, 2008
OTEC and CO2 sequestration
Christopher Barry, has an article on OTEC and CO2 sequestration at RenewableEnergyWorld.com. This article also discusses the subject of dissolved CO2 in the deep water which is being brought up by an OTEC system. We have a paper from 1989, Carbon dioxide release from OTEC cycles, by Herbert J. Green and Peter R. Guenther that discusses this issue, in the OTEC Library.
Xenesys progress
Xenesys, the Japanese OTEC company, is being very active in general. I would recommend that you visit their frequently updated English language website.Labels: otec |
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