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Hawaii is often the first to roll out new renewable energy projects and for good reason. The island state depends on imported fuel to provide most of its power, but that is changing quickly. The state has a plan to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 and it has already installed wind power plants, sophisticated smart grid systems, plenty of rooftop solar and, now, the first fully closed-cycle Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plant in the U.S.
OTEC is a process that produces electricity by using the temperature difference between the warm ocean surface waters of tropical areas and the much colder deep water below. The plant that Hawaii has just installed pumps water from the warm shoreline as well as from the cold deeper ocean through a heat exchanger. The resulting steam drives a turbine and produce electricity at an onshore power station, pictured below.
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The OTEC plant has a capacity of 105 kW, which is enough to power 120 Hawaiian homes per year. That may seem paltry, but even at that small capacity, it's the largest plant of its kind in the world. It will serve as a demo site called the Ocean Energy Research Center to prove the potential of this type of technology and to inspire other places in the region like Okinawa and Guam to install something similar.
The article projects electricity provided by a scaled-up version of the plant would retail at $0.20/kwh. Given that Hawaii has the highest electricity rates in the nation, in the neighborhood of $0.48/kwh, that's a big savings.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:19AM
That salt water and all the contaminants -- not to mention the barnacles and other biology -- love to chew up industrial machinery, meaning everything is in a constant state of repair. I haven't RTFA, but I really hope that that 20ยข / kWh price includes a generous maintenance budget.
If it does, fantastic. Great way to harvest solar energy in an island environment like Hawaii. But, if not...well, if not, it's doomed to failure.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:52AM
They've been studying the biofouling problem [nih.gov] for decades at that site. I'm sure that the maintenance costs are fully factored in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:29AM
Another cost not counted. Warming the lower ocean. Weather effects you cannot predict.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:04PM