Renewable Energy News - OTEC - Ocean Thermal Energy Conservation

Renewable energy is considered by many as the corner stone of Britain’s energy security. With North Sea oil and gas reserves declining and the recent nuclear fumble it is becoming ever true that we will have to rely heavily on renewable energy generation to keep the light on in Britain.

Green energy generation also plays a centre role when the subject is climate change. Across the globe scientists, researchers and engineers alike are developing innovative energy generating ideas using renewable resources.

Recently I was checking on the latest news about renewable energy generation and one thing has caught my attention; energy generation using deep sea water or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC).

Ocean thermal energy conversion uses the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters to run a heat engine. As with any heat engine, the greatest efficiency and power is produced with the largest temperature difference. This temperature difference generally increases with decreasing latitude, i.e. near the equator, in the tropics. Historically, the main technical challenge of OTEC was to generate significant amounts of power efficiently from this very small temperature ratio. Changes in efficiency of heat exchange in modern designs allow performance approaching the theoretical maximum efficiency. – Wikipedia

The video below explains in more detail how OTEC can generate energy. Despite not being a technology that we could use here in the UK, what really caught my attention was the fact that a single 100 Mw floating plant can generate 800 million Kw of electrical energy, without the need of oil, gas or any other fossil fuel. OTEC only needs the temperature difference between the ocean hot surface water and cold deep water.

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