Renewable Energy From The Deep Ocean
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Stumble ThisOcean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a method for generating electricity which 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. However, evaporation prevents the surface temperature from exceeding 27 deg.C (80 deg.F). Also the subsurface water rarely falls below 5 deg.C. 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.
from wikipedia, video via hight3ch.com
from wikipedia, video via hight3ch.com
This sounds like a neat way of generating energy, but at the same time it seems highly doubtful that it's practically doable.
As charliem pointed out, the climatic effect of this has to be thoroughly studied before it is even partially viable. Isn't the climate of every coastal country severely dependent on the flow of the major warm and cool watercurrents? As well as most marine life migratory patterns?
Seems like a very dangerous force to mess with. I would by far prefer for the effort to be focused on nuclear- or sun-based alternatives.
But just like the poor wind generator preformance, this seems to simply be too expensive an quite frankly ineffective to be of any real use. The way they claim that 40 of these power stations could generate enough electricity for Puerto Rico most likely doesn't take into consideration any other factor than the optimal generation capacity of each of those power stations.
The way they generate electricity is not in question, it seems like a great way to do it. However, if most of it is used to power the process and transport the product to the mainland then it's a lost cause. Would be interesting to hear from someone with knowledge of this and hear how they propose to solve such issues.