Hawaii Project Taps Sea Water To Produce Electricity

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Hawaii Project Taps Sea Water To Produce Electricity

On the Kona side of the Big Island of Hawaii, an industrial tower with a bunch of pipes is sitting amid swaying palm trees while making history. The tower has been tapping the water from the ocean beyond to produce electricity, which it’s been feeding to the grid since June 

This 100-kilowatt project is special. Although it’s onshore, it’s designed to demonstrate how the vast sea could one day provide a steady supply of electricity to the grid. If it performs well, then it could pave the way for larger projects to be built offshore and send electricity back to land, something that very few ocean power projects have been able to accomplish because of a variety of technical and funding difficulties.

The project belongs to Makai  Ocean Engineering, which is holding a dedication ceremony for the installation today at the technology park run by the state-funded Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. Makai is in the midst of negotiating a power contract with the lab to sell the power from the project to help finance its future research and development effort.

“The ocean is the world’s largest battery. Sunlight is stored in the surface layer of the ocean, and we are collecting all this solar energy,” said Duke Hartman, vice president of business development at Makai, based on Oahu.

The ocean promises to be a great source of electricity, but whether ocean power will be economical to produce remains a big question. A good deal of R&D work has been done by public institutions and private technology developer around the world to harness the steady and churning waves and currents to drive turbines and generators to produce electricity, but many have struggled to demonstrate their technology’s effectiveness and longevity.

Ocean power offers some nice benefits. The fuel is free, and ocean power plants wouldn’t emit carbon emissions and contribute to climate change the way that coal and natural gas power plants do. Ocean power plants, unlike solar or wind, also can generate electricity around the clock.

The electricity sector produces the largest share, or 31%, of carbon emissions in the country, according to Environmental Protection Agency. Coal power plants are the chief culprits — they generate 39% of the electricity nationwide but 77% of the carbon emissions from the sector, the EPA said.

Source: Forbes

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