Monday, October 7, 2013

RECENT OTEC DEVELOPMENTS


It was in 1979 that Lockheed succeeded in attaining net positive with the 50 kW Mini-OTEC (above), a closed cycle ocean thermal energy conversion platform, off the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA).  In 1982, a team from Japan also advanced the field with a closed cycle 100 kW OTEC system on Nauru (left).  That was the last true net positive experiment, although the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research in 1993 gained fame with an open cycle 210 kW (world record net power of  103 kW) facility at NELHA, which produced electricity and freshwater (below):


Two decades later, a 50 kW OTEC system is now producing electricity at Kumejima, Okinawa.


The first week of September saw considerable activity in OTEC, as reported in the following postings:










Among the key participants of the gatherings above included Robert Varley of Lockheed Martin (which announced an OTEC partnership with China--photo of signing to left included Secretary of State John Kerry), Ted Johnson of Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation (which recently announced a $7.7 million equity offering) and Eileen O'Rourke of OTEC International, who talked about their 1 MW OTEC experiment to be built at NELHA and the status of a partnership with Hawaii Electric Company to build a 100 MW OTEC commercial plant for Honolulu (top to bottom):


The OTEC Africa Conference will be held in Boras, Sweden next week, where discussed will be the latest developments:



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2 comments:

  1. Aloha,

    Thanks for writing about the upcoming OTEC conference in Sweden. We (I and OTEC researcher Lars Golmen, Norway) believe that this might be one of the biggest OTEC event throughout history, with twenty-five speakers from fifteen countries. We have high hopes for commercial OTEC, and will post some of the speeeches on our web site (www.otecafrica.org/conference ) afterwards.

    Petter Dessne
    Conference organizer

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    Replies
    1. My best to Lars. I had your gathering in my early plans, but other priorities overwhelmed my schedule. Wish you much success!

      Aloha.

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