The Power Of The Gulf Stream  

EE Times has an update on efforts to harness the power of the Gulf Stream - Going deep: Ocean to power grid, recharge fuel cells.

Harnessing ocean power to generate electricity, hydrogen to fuel cars and heat exchangers to cool buildings is the aim of a $13.75 million effort at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Ocean Energy Technology.

The Center has already built a fleet of acoustic doppler current-profiler platforms to be anchored later this year off Florida's Atlantic coast. By 2009, the Center hopes to have permanent mooring sites picked for underwater adaptations of wind turbines. The ocean turbines would be mated to on-shore hydrogen storage facilities that could recharge fuel cells and generate electricity. The moorings will also house pumping facilities to pipe frigid deep ocean water coming from the Arctic Circle into buildings' heat exchangers for cooling.

"The Gulf Stream works 365 days a year, allowing electricity generated from its current to be available 24/7, compared with solar or wind resources. Plus there is a the possibility of using the thermal difference between the warm waters nearer the surface, and the very cold water at the bottom which comes from the Arctic Circle," said Sue Skemp, COET's executive director. ...

The project will also seek to harvest chilly waters at the bottom of the Gulf Stream, similar to a project already underway in Hawaii, Skemp said. Electrical generators in Hawaii currently harness geothermal gradients inside lava tubes. Researchers there also have experience piping cold water ashore from the ocean depths for use in heat exchangers used to cool buildings.

The first Florida project starting later this summer, will establish temporary moorings 13 to 15 miles offshore for acoustic doppler current-profilers used to evaluate how much the Gulf Stream wanders. The fleet of acoustic sensors will evaluate specific sites for energy-generation potential, as well as to catalog the local ecology and evaluate the environmental impact of an underwater power plant.