Potential Markets and Benefits from Ocean Thermal Energy
Submitted by R-Squared Energy Blog
Happy Thanksgiving to those who will celebrate it tomorrow. I plan to spend the long weekend with my family, and probably won’t be on here much.
In the interim, two things. First is that it is about time to start thinking about the top energy stories of the year. As in year’s past, I would like reader’s opinions on the top energy-related stories of 2009. I will put up a post late in December with the ones that I think are most significant.
Second, I present a guest post by Dr. Robert Cohen on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). Dr. Cohen has been an advocate of OTEC for many years, and has posted a guest essay here previously:
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion
There were some useful comments following that essay that I think explain the challenges for OTEC. Dr. Cohen has a website where he addresses OTEC in more detail, and his contact information is also available there.
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Robert Cohen, November 24, 2009
Once the Obama Administration and the Congress put ocean thermal R&D back on a fast track, one that leads to the maturation of this technology within a few years, ocean thermal energy can foreseeably provide baseload electricity to energize at least three major geographic markets (see the ocean thermal resource map on the next page) in the following time-frames:
1) An early market to displace the use of oil, oil that is presently being burned to generate electricity in places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and in many developing countries. Places that are relatively accessible to the ocean thermal resource. Years ago we estimated that that early market could utilize about 50,000 MWe, which amount would achieve an oil savings of 2 million BBL/day [calculated @ 40 BBL/day per 1 MWe of ocean thermal].
2) A near-term market for electricity generated (for example) in the Gulf of Mexico and delivered via submarine cable to the U.S. electrical grid at points on the U.S. Gulf Coast, such as Key West, Tampa, New Orleans, and Brownsville. This source of baseload electricity could substantially implement the priority strategies advocated by Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens, which are aimed at providing renewable energy for propelling vehicles.
3) A potentially vast longer-term market for products derived from electricity generated aboard a fleet of ocean thermal plantships grazing on the high seas. Those plantships would convert the baseload electricity (plus air and water) to energy-intensive products such as hydrogen or ammonia, which could be shipped as energy carriers or as final products. For example, ammonia could be used as a hydrogen-carrier, combustion fuel, or for fertilizer.
Note that achieving the third option would mean that energy and energy-products could be shipped to the USA from domestically-owned ocean thermal plantships at locations that are in many cases closer to our shores than are many of our (often hostile) foreign sources of imported oil.
A global map of the OTEC Thermal Resource to supply energy to the above markets
This map shows contours of annual average temperature differences, in degrees Celsius, available in the world’s major oceans between surface waters and the cold water at 1000 meters depth that serves as a heat sink. The most desirable regions (bounded by the areas in yellow) are where that parameter equals or exceeds 20 degrees Celsius.
Energy FROM the oceans, to replace energy from ACROSS the oceans!
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