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July 22, 2006
Energy from the Sea
When I was a boy the image above captured my attention. The science was so straight forward that even a pre-teen could understand. Using temperature variations between the bottom of the ocean and the top of the ocean, you could generate electricity. No magic really and this was even before I knew about thermocouples which actually can literally generate electricity based off of temperature differences. The technology is called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). It's a fascinating way to generate nearly unlimited sums of electricity with the only cost being maintenance of the faculity and the price of its construction.
As a young engineer it seemed so straight forward that it seemed in a few short years that electrical generation would be a concern of the past. But as I learned in my youth, technology that's sitting on the shelves, never comes off the shelves because of corrupt corporate entities and even when that isn't working against you new ideas are seldom attempted because people are extremely risk adverse when it comes to new technology. They'll spend billions on something that fails regularly, but ask them to spend a couple of million on something that changes the nature of the world and they start hyperventilating and faint.
I grew up without the realization that we had just grown too stagnate to make forward progress anymore. That's why I had so much trouble believing Al Gore's thought that there could ever be a tipping point reached in the global warming debate. We've had for as long as I've been alive the technology sitting on the shelves to solve every single major issue facing the world today. There is no a single one that there isn't a technological solution for and that we couldn't fix in a matter of a decade. But we've become a nation of people without vision or the willpower to solve our own problems. We've been over come by lazy thinking and radical right wing hate ideology that tells us we should just accept the failures of our nation and consider them inevitable parts of life. It's a laughable joke that such foolishness has become the norm in the once great nation of the United States. The boy that saw these designs decades ago and grasped the implications of what they offered is in complete dismay.
Read more over at Technology Review, Wikipedia, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Posted by Jamison at July 22, 2006 1:48 PM
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Comments
Ok how much does it cost to build a 5000MW plant in the Islands, Compare it to the cost of a Fossil Fuel Plant, the Fuel transport cost, the Fuel Cost and Maintenance costs over 20 years.
Posted by: Royal at July 23, 2006 9:29 AM
We usually just calculate it based off of cost per kilowatt hour which includes all that information, the cost is 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. Just give you some perspective using goal the average cost is from 4 to 13 cents per kilowatt hour with an average across the US of 7 cents per kilowatt hour. Hydroelectric sources are 4 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. And nuclear is 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt hour. Of course, wind power is cheaper at about 5 cents per kilowatt hour, but it's not as dependable as the temperature of the oceans now is it? Geothermal is one I almost forgot 4 to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. What am I missing, natural gas is in the 2 to 5 cent range per kilowatt hour, but the natural gas prices have gone up massively as it was coming from the Gulf Oil wells that were damaged by Katrina. All the renewable ones cost more per kilowatt hour to put in, but they make it back up during operation. Corporate entities looking for the quick buck don't have much interest in introducing these kinds of technologies.
Posted by: Jamison at July 23, 2006 2:45 PM