Global OTEC has signed a lease agreement with the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) to establish its first US-based development site at the Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park (HOST Park).
Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a form of ocean energy that uses the natural thermal differences at different ocean depths to create power, 24/7, 365 days a year. It is a form of clean, renewable power that works best on tropical islands where the water warms significantly. More than 600 million people live on tropical islands that currently rely on expensive imported fossil fuels and deal with an insecure and pricey power system.
HOST Park will serve as the company’s primary location where components designed to enhance the performance and economics of OTEC will be developed an integrated. This is a critical step toward commercial-scale offshore systems that can deliver reliable baseload power for tropical regions and offshore industries.
“Keahole Point has long been a proving ground for ocean thermal energy technology, and establishing our footprint here is a natural step in our pathway to commercialisation,” Dan Grech, Founder and CEO of Global OTEC. “HOST Park gives us the infrastructure, pre-permitting, local community, and the seawater provision necessary to accelerate the development of high-performance OTEC systems that can operate at meaningful scale.”
Global OTEC will commence detailed design and testing of systems that integrate next-generation equipment, such as heat exchangers, and configuration improvements into optimised OTEC Power Modules designed to drive down cost and increase efficiency across future offshore units.
HOST Park offers deep-water access and an existing ecosystem of ocean technology innovators, giving Global OTEC the ability to accelerate hardware readiness and validate key system interfaces under real-world conditions.
Grech wrote in a post: “Some of the earliest breakthroughs in OTEC happened along this coastline, as well as some very recent ones too! It is hard not to feel like we are standing on the shoulders of giants when you look at the decades of work that have gone into deep ocean water management here. The US government has invested over $100m into building out this capability and we feel very lucky to take our place here.
Plainly put: permitting and consenting slows or kills so many innovative projects.
Our tenancy on a very unique plot here mitigates that challenge. HOST Park is pre-permitted for OTEC and has a firm understanding of the infrastructure required to work with large temperature gradients and deep ocean intakes pipes. That experience will help us shorten deployment time and reduce the costs normally associated with demonstrating a system of this scale.”
