In an effort to bring clean, renewable energy to some of the world’s more remote islands — many of which are powered by old diesel generators — a pan-European consortium of seven companies has designed a device capable of turning seawater into electricity.
The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, technology consists of three main parts that are being built all over the world: a cold-water riser pipe, which is being fabricated in Austria, a cylindrical hull, which is being built in the Canary Islands (a Spanish autonomous community, where the OTEC will be assembled and tested), and a gimbal connection point.
Once the entire OTEC prototype is complete, it will be installed on the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, a little under two miles off the coast. There, it will be tested in harsh ocean conditions for one year. The OTEC is designed to be disconnected if conditions get too harsh and moved closer to shore until the weather clears up.
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