KC3-OTEC Rough Draft

The Ocean, with its gigantic and immense form, is a place filled with incredible power and heat. Leading to a new and alternate way of generating electricity, one physicist proposed tapping the thermal energy of the ocean. Applying the different temperatures and depths of the ocean, a new and alternate way of generating electricity was made in a process call Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC).

In 1881, Jaques Arsene d’Arsonval, who was a French physicist had an idea of creating energy from the different temperatures of the ocean. Influenced by the physicist, a student, Georges Claude, built the first OTEC plant in Cuba in 1930. This plant produced 22 kilowatts of electricity with a low-pressured turbine. Then, in 1956, ither French scientists had created an incomplete 3-megawatt OTEC plant. Today, the United States are involved in OTEC research. From the establishment of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, the process of converting the ocean’s power to energy has become amazingly vivid, not only in Hawaii, but also in other places in the world.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC systems uses the natural temperatures of the ocean between the warm water and cold water, which differes by about 36 degrees F. With the oceans’s natural thermal gradient, an OTEC system produces a significant amount of power. This makes the oceans a vast renewable resource that can create billions of watts of electric power that’s promising for tropical island communities that rely heavily on imported fuel.

With the different types of OTEC systems, including closed-cylce, open cycle, and hybrid, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion has endless ways of generating electricity. With use of fluid with a low-boiling point, the tropical oceans’ warm surface, and the warm sea water, The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is sought to be a greate alternate way to make energy for many with much needed power, as well as desalinated water and variety of mariculture products.

The OTEC process is also rich in nutrients from the cold, deep seawater used in the process. This results in the nutrients being used to culture marine organisms and plant life near the shores on land. Not only being able to generate energy, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is also beneficial to marine and plant life.

Today, the economics of energy production have delayed the financing and operating of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion power plants. Even the initial investment required to build large-scale plants are being delayed until the price of fossil fuels increases or governments provide financial incentives.

In Conclusion, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, uses the difference in temperature between the warm and cold depths of the ocean. This process continues to spread in different places in the world that started by the idea of Jaques Arsene d’Arsonval, who has influenced many lives around the world by making very own OTEC power plants overtime. While the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority remains one of the world’s leading test facilities for Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, OTEC continues to generate electricity from the power of the ocean that not only provides energy, but also gives nutrients that cultures marine and plant life. Despite the set backs of creating OTEC plants being delayed, OTEC promises to produce energy especially for tropical island communities.