A form of renewable energy that relies on differences in ocean temperatures could provide power to many areas., nuclear, hydro, wind, and wave are all methods for generating sustainable energy that most of us are already familiar with. But there is one more, and it was first proposed in the 1880s. makes use of the difference in temperatures between the warm surface of the oceans heated by solar radiation and the deeper cold waters.
D’Arsonval’s student, Georges Claude, an entrepreneur who had become rich selling neon lights, built the world’s first OTEC plant in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1930. Claude’s system worked, generating 22 kilowatts of electricity, and Claude began fundraising to build a larger plant in Santiago. However, he failed to raise the funds, and the original plant was later destroyed in a storm.
One reason is that the plants require at least a 20 degrees Celsius , or 68 degrees Fahrenheit difference in temperature between surface and deep water. These conditions occur only near the equator, far from where energy is needed most. This is doubly true for onshore facilities. Running a huge pipe far enough to find cold water is very expensive. One alternative is to build the plant on a platform at sea and run the pipe straight down. Perhaps these could be parked near offshore wind turbines and share the cable to run, George Hagerman, a senior project scientist at Old Dominion University’s Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, suggested using a tunnel underneath the ocean floor to bring cold water to an onshore plant.
Other types of OTEC systems, called open OTEC , are designed to, researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa found that one OTEC plant would have minimal impact on the local ocean environment. However, if the seas ended up cluttered with the plants, they would turn over enough seawater to eliminate the thermal gradient that makes the process work in the first place.