History

History of OTEC

The concept of OTEC was developed by Jacques D’Arsonval in France in the 1880's, after an idea presented by Jules Verne in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (published in 1869). His disciple, engineer and entrepreneur Dr. Georges Claude, who improved the air liquefaction process, and invented neon lighting, built the first plant in Matanzas, Cuba in 1930. The plant was destroyed by a hurricane during initial testing, but did operate for a few days. Dr. Claude allegedly attained net power generation, but this cannot be verified with available information.

Part of the structures built by Dr. Claude in Matanzas, Cuba (from Cuban Bohemia)

Subsequently, and inspired by what he considered a success during his short-lived Cuban experiment, Dr. Claude attempted to use OTEC to manufacture ice in Brazil, but the facility was also damaged in a storm. In the mid 1950's French engineers again attempted to build an OTEC plant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, but the plant proved too costly and was never built.

Ship "Tunisie", on which Dr. Claude installed his OTEC plant for Brazil (from French Wikipedia)

In 1950’s Norwegian-American engineer Bryn Beorse, who had studied the French work, and Professor Everett D. Howe founded the Sea Water Conversion Laboratory at University of California and obtained some government funds for research. An open-cycle plant was proposed for water desalination in California (the temperature differential needed to produce desalinated water is less than what is required to produce power) but government was not receptive.

During the energy crisis of the mid 1970's, the U.S. Government funded OTEC research. Proposals for a demonstration system were requested by the Department of Energy. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was among the proposers and conducted several detailed studies on the feasibility of OTEC. Under the Federal program, a test facility (mini-OTEC) was eventually built in Hawaii. Later, when oil prices were reduced, the Federal government lost interest in the program, although the state of Hawaii has continued to investigate applications of deep ocean water. A Japanese consortium later built a land-based OTEC facility in the island of Nauru in the Pacific. However, both were research units too small to be scaled to commercial sized systems. India reportedly tested a 1 MW pilot plant. In May 1993, an open-cycle OTEC plant at Keahole Point, Hawaii, produced 50,000 watts of electricity during a net power-producing experiment. This broke the record of 40,000 watts set by the Japanese system in 1982.

To learn more about why research in OTEC stopped, and why OTEC is desirable today, click on the links below: