GC: n

CT: OTEC power plants require substantial capital investment upfront. OTEC researchers believe private sector firms probably will be unwilling to make the enormous initial investment required to build large-scale plants until the price of fossil fuels increases dramatically or national governments provide financial incentives. Another factor hindering the commercialization of OTEC is that there are only a few hundred land-based sites in the tropics where deep-ocean water is close enough to shore to make OTEC plants feasible.

S: http://energy.gov/eere/energybasics/articles/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion-basics (last access: 25 February 2015)

N: 1. Using ocean temperature differences.
2. The ocean is, for all practical, an infinite heat source, converting and storing the incident solar energy from the sun in the form of warm surface water. The warm water is pumped through an evaporator containing a working fluid in a closed Rankine-cycle system. The vaporized working fluid drives a gas turbine which provides the plant’s power. Having passes through the turbine, the vapor is condensed by colder water drawn up from deep in the ocean and then pumped back into the evaporator for reuse in the same cycle. No “fuel” of any kind is used; the enclosed working fluid simply is evaporated and condensed over and over by the warm surface and colder deep ocean water.

S: 1 & 2. GDT.

SYN: ocean thermal energy conversion power plant, solar sea power plant, SSPP.

S: TERMIUMPLUS

CR: kinetic energy from marine currents, ocean thermal energy conversion, tidal energy, tidal power plant.