When Green Energy is Blue Energy: Power From the Sea
The potential thermal, or heat, energy in the ocean is staggering—every day, the world’s oceans absorb an amount of energy equal to that stored in 250 billion barrels of oil. OTEC also has a long pedigree: first proposed in 1881 by a French scientist, an experimental open-cycle system was built in Cuba in 1930 but was net energy negative—more power had to be put into the system to run it than it produced.
Developments or experiments since then have been more encouraging—with net positive results in the U.S., India, and Japan—but overall, the cost to generate power this way is high on a per-kilowatt basis, and the technology works best in tropical or subtropical regions where the temperature difference between surface and subsurface water is great. Considerable potential is there, but as yet there is no economical solution to unlock it.
Floating OTEC Power Plant. (image: projectphoenixfoundation.us)
We Don’t Know Which or When, But Ocean Power is Coming
Do you remember the early days of music file sharing? Of video recording? Of computers, before Microsoft provided the operating systems for most of them? Whenever there are many competing technologies, it’s difficult to predict which one(s) will dominate, or exactly when they’ll become significant.
But with ocean power being an inexhaustible, completely green energy source, and with well over a dozen distinct, viable schemes for tapping it, you should take it as a given that one day, not only will much of your electricity be green—some of it will be blue.
Massive Solar Updraft Energy Project Planned For Arizona | HeatingOil.com says: says:
[...] Solar updraft is just one of several ways to capture the sun’s energy. Other techniques include photovoltaic (solar electric cells, like a desktop calculator has) and solar thermal. And solar thermal itself has several variations, such heating water in pipes (like home solar hot water systems) or focusing the sun’s rays with mirrors onto a central tank of fluid which is superheated (basically, an industrial-sized, electricity-generating solar oven). Using the wind as the medium makes sense, given that wind turbines are proven, reliable technology. That’s why some of the most-developed schemes for tapping wave or ocean power do so using the wind: in oscillating water columns, ocean waves are used to create wind which turns turbines. [...]
Heating Oil Weekly Roundup: Weather Maps, Garbage to Fuel, and Tidal Energy | HeatingOil.com says: says:
[...] has us covered. A company called SeaKinetics has developed the HydroWing, which converts the energy of the tides into electricity. SeaKinetics envisions a whole underwater farm of HydroWings feeding an underwater power [...]
Scotland Turns to Wave Energy to Cut Emissions | HeatingOil.com says: says:
[...] reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Many other countries and universities are also interested in harnessing the power of the sea to meet their renewable energy needs. For their part, England, Norway, and Australia have reported success with oscillating water [...]