Sunday, August 23, 2009

Lockheed Awarded Navy Contract for OTEC Work

OTEC will tap solar energy stored in the tropical ocean.
Money to fund more development work on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) isn’t gushing, but at least there’s a steady flow to encourage believers in this promising but still-distant technology.

The Defence Professionals website included the Navy’s $8.1 million contract with Lockheed Martin in a long list awards by the Department of Defense. At least one of them – to Boeing Co. – had 10 figures.

We can only hope that an 8- or 9-figure award is in somebody’s future to launch a full-fledged OTEC plant somewhere, such as Hawaii. Estimates to build even a 10-MW pilot plant are in the $200 million range, so if this technology is every to get a foothold, it’ll probably take a big fat DoD contract to make it happen.

Lockheed is putting a fair amount of its formidable PR muscle into OTEC, such as an attractive video featuring Dr. Ted Johnson, the company’s director of Alternative Energy Development.

Johnson will be in Hawaii for the 2009 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit and Expo the first week of September. He’ll participate in an Ocean Energy breakout session Wednesday afternoon, September 2 with a presentation titled “OTEC Pilot Plant Project in Hawaii.” (We're looking forward to the session, as little has been said publicly about the project since Governor Lingle made an announcement nine months ago.)

DefPro’s OTEC Announcement

Lockheed Martin Corp., Manassas, Va., is being awarded an $8,119,625 firm-fixed-priced contract to advance the development of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) technology system components and subsystems for Navy applications.

The work will support the Naval Facilities Engineering Services Center (NAVFAC ESC) Ocean Facilities Department in the execution of ocean energy systems development to advance OTEC as a renewable ocean energy technology for future applications at Department of Navy facilities.

The primary work to be performed includes identifying and supporting the most efficient and direct path to OTEC commercialization, and OTEC component and subsystem design, fabrication and validation tests. Work will be performed in Hawaii, California, Texas, and Virginia, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2010.

Funds are provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with four proposals received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Specialty Center Acquisitions, NAVFAC, Port Hueneme, Calif., is the contracting activity (N62583-09-C-0083).

2 comments:

Gary said...

Update?

What of "Mist Lift" OTEC?

Jeremy Malet said...

With regards to the quoted costs to set up a 10 mw system. RE-systems Ltd in the UK have developed an inexpensive alternative to the traditional pipe delivery system for the deep ocean water. They are currently looking to advance their system through investors and partners and hope to market ready in 2014.