Abstract
Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a promising renewable energy technology to generate electricity and has other applications such as production of freshwater, seawater airconditioning, marine culture and chilled-soil agriculture. Previous studies on the technology have focused on promoting it to generate electricity and produce energy-intensive products such as ammonia and hydrogen. Though the technology has been understood in the past couple of decades through acadeic studies and limited demonstration projects, the uncertainty around teh financial viability of a large-scale plant and teh lack of an operational demonstration project have delayed large investments in the technology.
This study brings together a broad overview of teh technology, market locations, technical and economic assessment of the technology, environmental impact of the technology and a comparison of the levelized costs of energy of this technology with competing ones. It also provides an analysis and discussion on application of this technology in water scarve regions of teh world, emphasized with a case study of the economic feasibility of this technology for the Bahamas.