An assessment of Florida's ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) resource

Technological advances in marine renewable energy allow for various methods of extracting energy in the form of electrical power from the ocean. One method is through the process of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). This study assesses the distributions of electrical power that can be extracted from the ocean around the state of Florida. The OTEC resource is analyzed with the combination of a state-of-the-art ocean circulation model, the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model, along with a state-of-the-industry OTEC plant model in order to predict the attainable power values offshore Florida. The power predictions are then constrained by local cold deep sea water replenishment to provide an upper limit to the sustainable OTEC resource. The thermal resource is used as input to the plant model to predict the potential power production. The resource data is then validated through the comparison against in situ oceanic measurements to safeguard the quality of the predicted power values.