Michael Giberson
Geothermal power generators use temperature differences between the surface and areas deeper in the earth to move a gas or liquid through a loop and drive a turbine. (One example is the , which uses 165°F water from a geothermal well to help keep the ice museum cold.)
The system uses the difference between the heat of the ocean’s surface water, about 80 degrees in the tropics, and the colder water deeper down to force ammonia through a turbine that turns a generator to produce electricity.
The electricity then can be converted into various sources of power, such as hydrogen, and then used to operate something like a hydrogen-cell car.
…The proposal describes the energy system as free of pollutants and, like the wind, cost-free as well.
“This can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, because of the enormity of this source,” Foust said. “It goes all the way around the earth, deep and wide.”
The term “cost-free” is incorrect, of course, both in reference to ocean thermal and wind energy power systems. The system cost something to build, cost something to maintain, and occupy real space in the water that would otherwise be available for other uses. Which is why, as inventor Foust is quoted as saying later in the article, “These alternate energy programs are only viable when the cost of energy is high.”
A recent report by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts assessing energy resources for the state was dismissive of the prospects for ocean thermal energy conversion, saying, “ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is the least accessible form of ocean power, and perhaps the least useful for the U.S.” (From the Texas state government’s The Energy Report 2008.) But all such assessments depend on the particular resources and technologies assumed, and both technology and our understanding of resources constantly changes.
At some price for electricity, such possibilities become economical.
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