Since the mid-1970s, ocean thermal energy conversion has been generously supported by state funds. Federal funds, through the Department of Energy, were for a time less abundant, especially during the Reagan administration, which did not assign a high priority to research into alternative energy resources. In the last few years, however, the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research and the Hawai`i Natural Energy Institute (based at the University of Hawai`i) have managed to get OTEC research funds earmarked for them in the federal budget.
In the last decade alone, state capital expenditures (that is to say, money for the planning, design, and construction of facilities, and the purchase of equipment) related to OTEC and development of the support facilities at Keahole Point have totaled more than $20 million. Several millions more have been spent on administrative costs. In the second half of the 1970s, when the Keahole Point site was first developed, the state spent about $7 million on OTEC-related projects. A rough survey (about the only kind possible, in fact) shows that federal dollars spent on OTEC research in Hawai`i have exceeded $90 million in the last two decades.
All totaled, at least $122 million in taxpayer funds have been spent in pursuit of ocean thermal energy conversion in Hawai`i. Private funds have also been contributed. For the most part, however, private firms have not seen OTEC as an investment opportunity. They have seen it instead as a golden goose, providing lucrative contracts let by the various agencies that have been authorized to spend the public’s dollars.
What follows is a bare-bones sketch of some of the more significant milestones in Hawai`i’s history of involvement with OTEC.
Mini-OTEC
In August 1979, with a little bit of private funds, a little bit of state support, and an in-kind contribution from the federal government (the loan of a barge), Mini-OTEC weighed anchor. For the next three and a half months it bobbed in the waters off Keahole Point, generating up to 52 kilowatts of electricity. Of that, between 35 and 40 kilowatts were needed to run the pumps and other system components — the so-called parasitic power load. But the rest of the electricity was used to operate television sets, lights, power tools and other electrical conveniences aboard the barge.
Mini-OTEC was built using existing technology and was widely hailed as a success. The National Society of Professional Engineers selected it as one of the ten outstanding engineering achievements for 1979.
Aside from being the last of the OTEC projects to generate more power than it consumed, Mini-OTEC was also the last to be done on a shoestring.
OTEC-1
OTEC-1 was the brainchild of the federal Department of Energy. The idea behind it was to allow tests in an ocean setting of some of the components proposed for use in commercial OTEC plants. The federal government provided a vessel, the Chepachet, a vintage ’43 oil tanker that had been drydocked since 1972. It was refitted for the OTEC experiments (designed by Argonne National Laboratory) by Global Marine Development, Inc., in Portland, Oregon, at a cost of $45 million. The ship, its hold full of ammonia, arrived in Honolulu in July 1980 for what was planned to be the start of a three-year program of tests and experiments involving essentially off-the-shelf systems and plumbing. Because of treacherous currents offshore of Keahole Point, its deployment was delayed. Then, the installation of three 2,200-foot-long, four-foot-wide cold-water pipes proved to be trickier than expected. By December, it was finally anchored 18 miles off Keahole Point and by January, tests were reported to have started.
But disputes arose between the Department of Energy and Global over how much Global was to be paid for its work on the tanker, and further disputes came up concerning whether it would be Global or another company, Tracor Marine, that would get the contract for running the tanker. Then, too, there was the shift in the White House. While President Carter had been generally supportive of alternative energy development, not so with the Reagan administration. By April 1, four months and $50 million after OTEC-1 started operation, the Department of Energy called a halt to the project and the tanker was returned to a berth in Pearl Harbor.
The Department of Energy turned the tanker over to the state’s Department of Planning and Economic Development, with the stipulation it could use any proceeds from sale of the tanker in the state’s own alternate energy programs. The state was constrained by the DOE to sell the tanker for scrap.
In 1986 or 1987, the sale was accomplished, with the state receiving $587,000. That money was turned over to the University of Hawai`i, with the intention that it be used to endow a professorial chair for research in alternate energy. Endowed chairs cost about twice that, however. The university tried, to no avail, to find matching funds, according to C. Barry Raleigh, dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology, and the money languished in a trust account.
The money is still there. Because it was invested in a money-market fund just before the crash of 1987, there is less of it than there might otherwise have been. According to Raleigh, attempts are ongoing to find a way to use the money for something short of an endowed chair — say, research projects in renewable energy.
Son of OTEC-1
In 1983, the three 2,200-foot lengths of pipe that had been suspended from OTEC-1 were salvaged from the open seas, where they had been left to float, marked by a buoy, since OTEC-1 ceased operations in April 1981. The pipes were towed to Kawaihae Harbor on the Big Island, where they were welded together, end to end. The resulting single pipe, now more than a mile long, was to have been towed to Keahole Point and installed there. No immediate use was anticipated, but Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i indicated to the Department of Land and Natural Resources (responsible for issuing the permit for work at Keahole Point, which is in the state’s Conservation District) that the pipe would probably come in handy in the future. Hawaiian Dredging and Construction Co. was to be paid about $1.2 million for the work, with the state and the federal government putting in roughly equal amounts.
On September 15, 1983, when Hawaiian Dredging attempted to place the pipe off Keahole Point, one of the joints failed. On October 26, 1983, it tried again to place the re-welded pipe, but was frustrated by rough seas and eight-foot waves. A rupture in one of the floatation bags caused the pipe to sink into the deep water off Keahole Point. Again, a joint failed. This time, one of the 2,200-foot sections of the pipe was lost. Two thirds were retrieved and, without further ado, were hauled back to Kawaihae Harbor and stockpiled. (The state and Hawaiian Dredging negotiated further payment, with the state’s tab ending up at $754,000.)
In later years, the state offered the sections that remained for use as the cold-water intake pipe in the large trench off Keahole Point. It was, however, judged to fall short of technical specifications.
Down-the-Slope Pipeline
In 1983, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration paid $7.6 million to Hawaiian Dredging and Construction to suspend a 400-foot length of eight-foot-wide pipe made of fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) in water 1,500 feet deep off Waikiki. The purpose was to test “design factors.” The test lasted about three weeks.
Following that, a 200-foot length of the pipe was to be placed on a sloping part of the seafloor off Keahole Point. The primary purpose of the project was “to demonstrate the installation of a large-diameter FRP pipe on a steep slope.” The pipeline was at no time intended to serve as a conduit for water.
After its installation, measurements were to have been taken on the hydrodynamic loads it was subject to at various times, and in various conditions. In 1986, NELH informed the Department of Land and Natural Resources that “custodianship” of the pipe had been transferred to NELH, which, rather than removing the pipe, wanted approval to allow it to remain in place. “In its current position it appears to be providing an artificial reef environment,” John Craven, chairman of the board of NELH, wrote then DLNR Chairman Susumu Ono on May 7, 1986. And, of course, there were “proposed future uses,” including possible installation of new oceanographic instruments as well as “monitoring of stress, current, pressure and tensile strength loads.” The DLNR concurred.
Kahe Point
The Department of Energy in 1980 issued a Program Opportunity Notice, informing interested parties that it would make money available for the planning and design of 40 megawatt OTEC plants. In an effort to encourage respondents to consider Hawai`i as the site for their proposals, the state sweetened the kitty with $1 million to help fund the environmental assessments for plants to be built in Hawai`i. In 1982, the Department of Energy selected two proposals for Phase I funding (conceptual design). One, proposed by Ocean Thermal Corp. (whose prime contractor was TRW), was for a land-based plant at Kahe Point, on the Waianae Coast of O`ahu. The second, by General Electric, called for building a plant off-shore in the same area. Each firm received $250,000 from the state, with the Department of Planning and Economic Development conducting a “common-base environmental study.”
The field was further narrowed (General Electric was dropped) during the Phase II portion of the DOE program. For this phase, calling for preliminary design of a pilot plant, Ocean Thermal was awarded a $5 million contract from the federal government. The state contributed $675,000 more. Phase II was completed, with Ocean Thermal Corporation designing a 50 megawatt closed-cycle OTEC plant.
Nothing more came of this project. The Department of Energy declared that closed-cycle OTEC had attained its majority and no longer needed federal support. If it was to be commercialized, it would be up to the private sector to get it launched. However, with plummeting world oil prices (and, in turn, lowered energy costs), and rising capital costs, a capital-intensive OTEC plant would not be able to produce electricity at kilowatt-hour rates comparable to what utilities were charging for power generated by conventional fossil-fuel-burning plants.
NPPE
This project, whose initials stand for “net power-producing experiment,” is being undertaken at Keahole Point by the Pacific International Center for High-Technology Research. If all goes as planned, this will be the first time an open-cycle OTEC plant will produce more energy than it consumes. It is scheduled to come on-line in September 1992 and to run for 12 to 18 months thereafter.
Granted, there will not be much net power produced: the projected net output, 40 kilowatts, is about what is needed to run the appliances in three dozen houses. For this, PICHTR will be paid $11.8 million by the end of this fiscal year. Planning documents it has submitted to the state Department of Business and Economic Development indicate it is expecting federal and state governments to contribute an additional $8.9 million through 1994 to cover costs associated with NPPE, with total costs approaching $21 million.
In fact, the state will not be paying in the future the amount PICHTR had projected and federal funds beyond the current fiscal year are questionable. The just-approved legislative budget for fiscal 1992 and 1993 calls for just $600,000 in state funds to go to the NPPE project (all of it in fiscal 1992). That is the amount that PICHTR told the state would be the minimum needed to complete and run for 12 months the open-cycle OTEC plant.
Some may recall PICHTR working on a 165-kilowatt demonstration open-cycle plant. This is that plant after several further calculations indicated the total capacity needed to be closer to 210 kilowatts (that is the generating capacity, at least, of the $3 million turbine that PICHTR has ordered for this project).
Open-cycle OTEC plants differ from the closed-cycle plants in several respects. First, open-cycle plants use warm water, instead of ammonia or other low-boiling-point substance, as the so-called working fluid. Getting water to boil at low temperatures requires low atmospheric pressures — so low, in fact, as to entail construction of a vacuum chamber. (This is not needed for closed-cycle OTEC.) Second, because the process involves evaporation of sea water, it yields desalinated water as a byproduct. (Closed-cycle systems can also produce desalinated water, but this entails piggybacking a desalinating plant onto the OTEC plumbing.) Third, and not least, with the federal government having closed the book on research for closed-cycle OTEC back in 1983, open-cycle OTEC was the only fruitful area to mine as far as federal government research funds were concerned.
Demi-OTEC
Technologically, closed-cycle OTEC may not present engineering challenges. Economically, it is still in its infancy. The state Department of Business and Economic Development, recognizing this, is trying to obtain funding for a Demonstration OTEC Power Plant (“Demi-OTEC” for short) that will show the economic feasibility of closed-cycle OTEC plants. The size of the plant has not been fixed yet. Much depends on how much water is available. Using the existing warm-water pipelines (and operating only when the NPPE isn’t), Demi-OTEC could produce 165 kilowatts (net) of power. If NPPE continuously operates, without the availability of additional warm water, “it is not feasible to maintain continuous power plant operation, as required for utility demonstration of OTEC power systems,” according to the Demi-OTEC proposal prepared for DBED. Under another scenario, a capped-off 24-inch warm water pipe (installed in the trench, but not used to date) could be unplugged. Using water from that source, Demi-OTEC could generate about 86 kilowatts. If 13,300 gallons per minute of cold water and 15,600 gallons per minute of warm water are available, Demi-OTEC can meet the objective of generating 200 kilowatts of net power, according to the proposal.
DBED has not yet received an appropriation for the plant. In 1990, however, it received a $5 million appropriation for additional deep-water pipes. With legislative appropriations for the plant itself uncertain, DBED is searching for private companies to help get Demi-OTEC off the ground.
MP-OTEC
This is a project of PICHTR whose funds have come from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The purpose is to develop OTEC systems that provide multiple products — not just energy and fresh water, but the products of aquaculture and agriculture as well as possible air-conditioning systems for buildings. The money from Japan is to total $8 million, distributed equally in eight annual installments, starting in 1987. In 1990, PICHTR told its Board of Directors that “the work … was conceived as consisting of two major activities: 1) site identification and economic assessment of potential islands; and 2) design of a multiple-product OTEC system.” No state agency in Hawai`i has been kept apprised in timely fashion of progress PICHTR is making in developing this system.
Volume 1, Number 11 May 1991
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