Power from the sea

Second time around…

Ocean heat may be used to generate electricity

Jan 7th 2012 | SAN FRANCISCO | 

EVEN by the standards of American bureaucracy, an organisation that operated for 13 years without achieving anything is impressive. Yet that was the fate of the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) permit office, which opened its doors in 1981 and closed them in 1994, having issued not a single OTEC permit.

The office was part of NOAA, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—a marine counterpart of the country’s space agency, NASA. And the idea of OTEC was to exploit the difference in temperature between the top of the ocean and the bottom, in order to drive turbines and generate electricity. The incentive was the oil-price spike of the 1970s. But once that incentive went away, so did interest in alternative sources of power and, eventually, so too did the office.

Alternative power sources are back in fashion, though, and OTEC is one of them. A range of companies, from giants such as Lockheed Martin to minnows like the Ocean Thermal Energy Corporation of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, are working on the technology, and this time it might actually come to pass. Most of the bits and pieces required can be borrowed from other areas of engineering, such as deepwater oil drilling. And the idea of a power station whose fuel is free is attractive, as long as the capital cost is not too high.