Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka
The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Strategies
and Analysis of Current Challenges
1
Lasantha Meegahapola*, 2Lanka Udawatta* and 3Sanjeeva Witharana**
*Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
**School of Process, Environment and Materials Eng., University of Leeds, UK
1
lasantha@ieee.org,2lanka@ieee.org, 3switharana@ieee.org
Abstract – This paper presents different roots of Ocean
Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) strategies and
challenges faced in terms of efficiency and economy of OTEC
plants. The conversion strategies primarily focus on open
cycle, closed cycle and hybrid plants. The efficiency studies
mainly skew towards the effect of plant distance and thermal
gradient towards plant efficiency. The economic analysis is
based upon the effect of per unit cost for OTEC plant
together with other important considerations such as Plant
Factor (PF) and offshore distance, which determine the cost
of power generation. Some illustrative examples are also
provided using the derived equations under efficiency and
economic studies.
Keywords: - Ocean thermal energy conversion, power
generation, economic analysis, plant factor, plant
efficiency
I INTRODUCTION
The population growth, rapid development of big
countries like China, India and Brazil, ever growing
desires of human beings to acquire comfort, and, fast
exhausting non-renewable energy resources are leading the
world to a well foreseen energy crisis. The conventional
renewable energy sources such as Wind, Biomass and
Solar are gaining recognition more than ever. Nevertheless,
given the technical, social and economic limitations
involved with design, operation and maintenance of these
plants, there exists a vacuum for distant competitors such
as Ocean Thermal Energy Generation (OTEG) to fill.
OTEG is a derivation from Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion, which is commonly known as OTEC.
The OTEC Technology first came into picture in 1881
from an idea of a French scientist Jacques Arsene
d’Arsonval [1]. Later Georges Claude, a student of
d’Arsonval, built an experimental open-cycle OTEC
system at Matanzas Bay, Cuba, in 1930. The system
produced 22 kW of electricity by using a low-pressure
turbine. In 1935, Claude [2] constructed another open-
cycle plant, this time aboard a 10,000-ton cargo vessel
moored off the coast of Brazil.
In 1956, another French Scientist came up with a novel
design for an open cycle design which had a capacity of 3
MW [3].But the plant was never completed, due to the
1-4244-1152-1/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE.
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competition from inexpensive hydroelectric power. A
landmark in the historical development of OTEC is the
establishment of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii
Authority (NELHA) in 1974. Soon, it became the world's
leading laboratory and test facility for OTEC technologies.
In 1979[4], the first 50 kW closed-cycle OTEC
demonstration plant went up at NELHA, which is known
as "Mini-OTEC". This plant was mounted on a converted
U.S. Navy barge moored approximately 2 kilometers off
Keahole Point. The plant used a cold-water pipe to produce
50 kW of gross power and 18 kW of net power.
In 1980, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) built
OTEC-1[2], a test site for closed-cycle OTEC heat
exchangers installed on board a converted U.S. Navy
tanker. In the following year, 1981, Japan demonstrated a
shore-based, 100 kW closed-cycle plant in the Republic of
Nauru in the Pacific Ocean. This plant employed cold-
water pipe laid on the sea bed to a depth of 580 meters.
The plant surpassed engineering expectations by producing
31.5 kW of net power during continuous operating tests. In
1984 [5], scientists at a DOE national laboratory, the Solar
Energy Research Institute developed a vertical-spout
evaporator to convert warm seawater into low-pressure
steam for open-cycle plants which achieved energy
conversion efficiencies as high as 97%. In May 1993 [4],
an open-cycle OTEC plant at Keahole Point, Hawaii,
produced 50,000 watts of electricity during a net power-
producing experiment. In 2000 barge mounted test plant
was installed temporary for experiment purposes near
Manner Sri Lanka.
It is estimated that the amount of energy absorbed by the
sea during a year is equivalent to four thousand times [4]
the energy requirements of the human per year. Yet,
harnessing of the energy from the sea has been a distant
option due to inherent constrains involved with it, such as
efficiency and economy issues.
This paper gives special emphasis on efficiency,
economic studies and challenges faced by the OTEC
scientists and evaluation of those challenges with relation
to derived equations in the paper. The further analysis is
also carried out on comparison of fossil fuel and OTEC
power plants based on their generation economy.
 Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka
The remaining sections of this paper are organized as
follows. Section II - Different OTEC conversion Strategies
developed by the scientists and their energy equations,
Section III - Efficiency of OTEC power generation based
on plant distance and thermal gradient, and Section IV -
The economy of OTEC power generation together with
vital energy equations. Section V and Section VI will
present results and conclusions respectively.
II. DIFFERENT OTEC STRATEGIES
Over the years scientists have developed various Ocean
Thermal energy conversion strategies to convert the ocean
energy to a form of useful energy for the human needs and
those strategies can be identified under three different
methodologies.
A. Open Cycle OTEC System
The first OTEC plant was developed by Georges Claude
[4], [5] was can be categorized into this type. In this
system, illustrated in fig 1, the warm sea water acting as
the working fluid and warm sea water is "flash"-evaporated
in a vacuum chamber to produce steam at an absolute
pressure of about 2.4 kilopascals.
Fig. 1. Open Cycle OTEC flow Diagram
Then the steam expands through a low-pressure turbine
which is coupled to a generator to produce electricity. The
steam exiting the turbine is condensed by cold seawater
pumped from the ocean's depths through a cold-water pipe.
If a surface condenser is used in the system, the condensed
steam remains separated from the cold seawater and
provides a supply of desalinated water circulates
continuously. The most of the OTEC plants build in the
early stages belonged to this type. The analysis of this
cycle leads following equations (1-6).
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Heat absorbed from sea water (J/s);
qw = m.wwC p (Twwi − Twwo ) (1)
Steam generation rate (kg/s) ;
m . s = q w / h fg (2)
Turbine work (J/s) ;
wT = m s . ( h3 − h5 ) = m s .η T ( h3 − h5 S ) (3)
Heat (rejected) into seawater (J/s);
q c = m . cw C p (T cw o − T cw i ) (4)
Thermal efficiency can be defined as follows.
ηT = Net Cycle work (5)
Added Heat
From equation (1), (2) and (3) yields to following solution.
m s . ( h3 − h5 )
ηT =
m . w w C p (T w w i − T w w o )
Where m.ww is the mass flow rate of warm water; m.cw is the
mass flow rate of cold water; Cp is the specific heat; Twwi
and Twwo are seawater temperature at the inlet and outlet of
the heat exchanger; hfg the heat of evaporation; and the
enthalpies at the indicated points are given by h, with the
subscript s referring to constant entropy. The turbine
isentropic efficiency is given by ηT. The subscript Cw refers
to the cold water.
B. Closed Cycle OTEC System
Shown in fig 2 is schematic of a closed-cycle OTEC
plant. The working fluid, which is generally a low boiling
point liquid, is made to a vapour by the warm seawater
flowing through a heat exchanger (evaporator) [7]. The
vapor expands at moderate pressures and rotates a turbine
which is coupled to a generator which would produce
electricity. The vapor is then condensed in a heat exchanger
(condenser) by rejecting its heat to the cold seawater
pumped from the ocean's depths. Then, the condensate is
pumped back to the evaporator and the cycle repeats. This
is regarded as a thermodynamically closed system, since the
working fluid re-circulates continuously. This system
displays higher efficiencies than the open cycle OTEC
system.
 Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka

Fig. 2. Closed Cycle OTEC System

Fig. 3. Hybrid OTEC System

Following equations can be derived for the closed cycle

III. EFFICIENCY OF OTEC POWER GENERATION
OTEC System.

In this section, efficiency is analyzed for potential sites

Heat Added (J/kg); identified by the OTEC scientists. The distance and
qA =h1-h4 (6) thermal gradient are greatly affected towards the efficiency
of the plant since approximately 20-30% of generated
Turbine work (J/kg); power will be consumed to pump sea water from long
wt= h1-h2 depth. The thermal gradient too plays a major role as the
thermal efficiency of the plant depends upon it. Our
Heat rejected (J/kg); analysis is limited to Closed Cycle OTEC systems.
|qr| = h2-h3
A. Efficiency Variation with the Pumping power
Pump work (J /kg);
|wp| = h4 – h3 A sample calculation is presented below to pronounce the
vitality of the pumping power required to transport warm
Cycle Net Work (J/ kg); water and cold water between the plant and the Sea.

∆wnet = (h1-h2 ) – (h4 – h3) (7) Total warm water input required per 1 MW = 4 m3/s

Total cold water input required per 1 MW = 2 m3/s

Where, h is the enthalpy at the indicated point of the
diagram. It follows that the heat-added plus the pump-work If offshore distance is x , efficiency of the pump is 72% [4]
is equal to the heat-rejected plus the turbine-work. and speed of pumping is 2m/s [4] following equation can
be derived for amount of Electricity needed for warm
water pumping;
C. Hybrid OTEC System
(x*4000kg/s*2m/s) 72% (8)
The Hybrid systems [4] are combination of two
technologies. Since it incorporates salient features of each, So the efficiency varies according to following way.
these systems demonstrate higher thermal efficiency. In a
hybrid OTEC system, warm seawater enters a vacuum
chamber where it is flash-evaporated into steam, similar to Net Efficiency = Gross out put- Pump usage (9)
the open-cycle evaporation process. This steam is is Gross Output
transported to the other end of the cycle to vaporize the
working fluid which in a closed-cycle. The vaporized fluid The net out put can get in the following way
then drives a turbine and produces electricity. The steam
exiting the turbine is directed to a condenser where it Net out put (1MW) = Gross out put- Pump usage (10)
produces desalinated water [12], as described in fig 3.
Equation (8), (9) and (10) yields to following solution.

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 Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka

Net Efficiency = Net out put + Pump usage - Pump usage of the system, therefore the analysis of thermal efficiency
Net out put +Pump Usage is adequate for this analysis.
Then it reduces to,
The equation (12) can be re-arranged in the following
Net Efficiency = Net out put form.
Net out put +Pump Usage
( h1 − h4 ) + ( h3 − h2 )
Net Efficiency = Net out put (11) η th = (13)
( h1 − h4 )
Net out put + (X*4000kg/s*2m/s) 72%

Where ( h1 − h 4 ) denotes net enthalpy difference of the

It is more useful to represent the Net efficiency in the system at the targeted location for the OTEC power plant.
above form for the ease of evaluating the efficiency Equation (13) could be further modified to arrive at the
variation with the distance. following form.

B. Efficiency Variation with the Thermal Gradient ( h3 − h2 )

µ th = 1 +
For the consistency of the analysis, eleven sites at nearly ( h1 − h 4 ) (14)
equal offshore distances of 0 km to 10 km were selected. µ th = 1 + k T G D
Table I provides locations and the temperature difference
between warm water and cold water [9].
Tc
Where, TGD =
TABLE I Th
OCEAN THERMAL GRADIENTS

Country/ Area Temperature Difference (0C ) Where k is a constant and TGD represent the thermal
Barbados 22 gradient ratio at a given point in the sea. Tc and Th are cold
Cuba 22-24 and hot seawater temperature respectively.
Grenada 27
Jamaica 22 IV. ECONOMY OF OTEC POWER GENERATION
Saint Vincent 22
Comoros 20-25 The economic analysis mainly focuses on capital cost
Fiji 22-23 efficiency of the closed cycle OTEC plant. This is highly
Maldives 22 important factor when evaluating the capital appraisal for
Samoa 22-23 an electricity generation project.
Seychelles 21-22
Typical OTEC plant has a PF of 80% [4] and it has
Solomon Islands 23-14 operating cost factor of 1.5 % [4] of the capital cost.
Economic analysis can be carried under various scenarios.
Assume that plant under consideration is 1 MW, and
Thermal Efficiency for closed cycle OTEC plant can be required capital cost is correlated to offshore distance [1]
derived through equation (5), (6) and (7) which yields to as given in Table II.
following equation.
TABLE II
CAPITAL COST VARIATION OVER OFFSHORE DISTANCE
wnet
ηth = Offshore Distance (km) Capital Coat ($/kW)
qA
10 4200
50 5000
100 6000
( h − h 2 ) − ( h 4 − h3 ) 200 8100
η th = 1 (12)
( h1 − h 4 ) 300 10200
400 12300
If Wnet held constant, thermal efficiency is governed by 500 14400
the heat added to the system. The heat added to the system 1000 24900
is completely depending on thermal gradient. The thermal
2000 45900
efficiency of the system directly affect to the net efficiency

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 Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka

According L. Vega’s equation [8] cost per kilowatt hour is
governed by the following equation.
P ($/kWh) = [(FC*CC) +(OM*G*CR)/NP*CF*8760)](15)
Where FC is annual fixed charge (e.g. government loan),
CC is the plant overall investment capital cost in $, OM is
operation and maintenance yearly $ expenditures, G is
present worth factor in years, CR is capital recovery factor,
NP is net power production, in kW, CF is production
capacity factor and 8760 is number of hours for one year.
V. RESULTS
The equation (14) could be utilized to analyze the
efficiency variation with the thermal gradient. According
to the equation derived for the thermal gradient (14), and k
is a constant for the given cycle. The Fig. 5 indicates the
thermal efficiency variation with the thermal gradient for
k= -0.5, which is the typical value for the given sites at
Table1.
According to the thermal efficiency variation, it is
desirable to locate OTEC plants, which have the thermal
gradient over 15 degrees of Celsius since it has efficiency
over 60 percent, which overrides the efficiency of diesel
power plant.
1

This section presents the results, which have obtained 0.8

through the derived expressions under section III and IV.
Further it indicates the optimal plant conditions to achieve

T h e rm a l e ffic ie n c y
higher efficiency and economy. 0.6

A. Variation of efficiency with distance 0.4

The equation (11) in section III of this paper was used to

0.2
plot the efficiency variation against the Distance as shown
by Fig 4. The other losses were assumed to be negligible.
0

1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38
Thermal gradient
0.9 Fig. 5. Efficiency Variation with Thermal Gradient
0.8
C. Variation of unit cost with plant factor
0.7

0.6 Equation (15) is used to analyze the unit cost variation

Efficiency

0.5
with the PF. In this analysis, the following assumptions
were made
0.4

0.3 For plant having offshore distance of 1000m, the required

0.2
capital investment is $24,900,000 with 10% [8] annual
fixed charge. Further assume life time of the plant is 20
0.1 years, capital recovery factor of 9% [8] and power
0 production of 1000 kW. Finally, the variation of the cost
100 500 900 4000 8000 per unit with the PF was obtained as shown in Fig 5.
Distance(m)
Fig. 4. Efficiency Variation over Distance 4

Fig 4 indicates a drastic reduction in efficiency when the 3.5

offshore distance exceeds 200m. This suggests the

3
importance of minimizing the distance between the water
fetching points (water wells) and the power plant. 2.5
However, practical issue may impose minimum pipe
Unit Cost ($)

2
length.
1.5

B. Variation of thermal efficiency with thermal gradient 1

Thermal efficiency mainly depends on the thermal 0.5

gradient of the proposed location for the OTEC plant. 0

0.1 0.5 0.9
Plant Factor

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 Second International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems, ICIIS 2007, 8 – 11 August 2007, Sri Lanka
Fig. 5. Variation of the Cost per unit with the PF
Confirming the common understanding, the minimization
of unit cost of generation is achievable through operation
of the plant at high PF.
D. Variation of unit cost with plant distance
By using the same equation (15) it is more desirable to
investigate the effect of plant generation capacity towards
the unit generation cost.
Assume PF kept at 0.9, operational and maintenance cost
is 1.5% of the total capital cost and other factors kept at the
same values as the example C, except for capital cost. The
following formula can be used to calculate the capital cost
for particular generation capacity [4].
Up to 10 MW, CC ($) =800G+18*106
More than 10 MW, CC ($) =125G+12*106
Where CC: is the Capital Cost and G is the Generating
Capacity (MW)
The variation of unit generation cost against plant
generation capacity can be plotted as shown in Fig 6.
0.35
0.3
0.25
Per Unit Cost($)
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0 (influence of the direction of injection) “,Elsevier Journal of
1000 6000 20000 70000
Generation Capacity(kW)
Fig. 6. Variation of the Unit Cost with Generation Capacity
The graph depicts that there is a strong relationship
between the generation capacity and unit generation Cost.
Therefore it is more economical to choose a plant having
over 25 MW of capacity.
VI. CONCLUSION
The analysis have evidently shown that off shore distance
and thermal gradient directly influence towards the plant
efficiency, where results have shown that the optimal
(compromise between efficiency and thermal gradient)
distance for the plant as 2000m from the shore.
The economic analysis concludes that OTEC plant should
maintain a plant factor of at least 0.9 where plant should
have a capacity of at least 25 MW to achieve a generation
economy compared to the other non-renewable energy
options.
From this work, it has shed some light on future OTEC
designers in terms of technology and economy. It remains
the fact that the optimal OTEC plant should be a
compromise between these two factors.
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overview, with special emphasis on the OTEC work performed at
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