By Eric Lindeman
Supported by two $1 million grants from the Departments of Energy, Lockheed Martin [LMT] is pursuing development and pilot demonstration of technologies to convert the ocean’s thermal energy into electricity.
The two grants, which Lookheed Martin received earlier this month, will be used to advance commercialization of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) technologies–using the temperature difference between warm surface water and colder deeper water to power a turbine generator that produces electricity.
In an OTEC generating plant, a pressurized working fluid is evaporated by warm ocean water, and the resulting gas is passed through a turbine, causing its blades to spin. The lower pressure gas is then condensed by cold ocean water back to a liquid, and a pump re-pressurizes the liquid working fluid, which goes back to the evaporator. At a commercial scale, OTEC would be baseload power, available at all times.
“The Department of Energy awards provide Lockheed Martin the opportunity to further demonstrate the capability of OTEC,” said Jeffrey Napoliello, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s New Ventures business division. “As a self-sustaining energy source, with no supplemental power required, OTEC will help our nation and our military achieve their renewable energy goals.”
Under the first DoE grant, Lockheed Martin plans to develop a tool to estimate the amount of energy that can be extracted from the ocean’s thermal layers. The dataset generated by the company’s geographic information system and software will be used to identify regions of the world viable for OTEC as well as for seawater-based air conditioning (SWAC).
In a March 17 announcement, Lockheed Martin said that the resource mapping will provide critical information to policy makers, the energy industry and the public about regional OTEC and SWAC feasibility.
SWAC, which uses cold seawater near coastlines to supply air-conditioner coolant, could significantly reduce electric utility loads during periods of high summer demand and is already in use in Hawaii, Bora Bora, Stockholm and Ottawa.
Under the second grant, Lockheed Martin will develop estimates of performance and life-cycle costs associated with utility-scale OTEC systems, hoping to demonstrate the economic feasibility of such projects. The company expects the resulting data to provide justification for pursuing commercialization of OTEC and generate investment interest.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman said that work under the DoE grants is “part of process leading up to building a pilot plant off the coast of Oahu, [Hawaii]. We would need additional funding for that.” The company envisions building a pilot plant of between 5 and 10 megawatts in 2013-14, he said, to serve as a prototype and validate technologies for a utility-scale OTEC plant of 100 MW or larger.
The DoE grants follow an $8.12 million Department of Defense award to Lockheed Martin last September. That contract, from the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, calls for development of critical OTEC system components and for an OTEC pilot plant design. In 2008, Lockheed Martin received a $1.2 million DoE contract to demonstrate how special cold water piping could be fabricated to carry the large volumes of seawater required to produce commercial power.
Lockheed Martin said its experience with OTEC technology began in the 1970s when it built a “Mini-OTEC.” That early prototype is still the world’s only floating OTEC system generating power in excess of what is required for self-sustainment. Since then, the company said, it has continued working to validate the critical technologies necessary for an OTEC system that can generate on a utility scale.